FT 

MEPDE 

4HV 

388 

Copy 1 


On 

The 

Firing 

Line 

Jenkin 

Lloyd 

Jones 







Glass_ 

Book___ 

THE EDWIN C. DINWIDDIE 
COLLECTION OF BOOKS ON 
TEMPERANCE AND ALLIED SUBJECTS 

(PRESENTED BY MRS. DINWIDDIE) 





















V 




















r-w 

3&8 

ON THE FIRING LINE 
IN THE BATTLE for SOBRIETY 


By 

JENKIN LLOYD JONES 



UNITY PUBLISHING CO. 

CHICAGO, ILL. 

1910 


M*s. Edwin c. DinwMdfe- 
6. 1335 


To Thomas , John , James , Enos and Philip , 
Loyal Brothers. 


Consistent practice is more convincing than preaching. 






























































“For it is precept upon precept , precept upon 
precept, line upon line t line upon line; here a little , 
there a little” 


—Isaiah xxviii'.W 


CONTENTS. 

A Night in a Saloon. 7 

Two Neighbors. 43 

The Flanking Columns. 81 


APPENDIX. 

A Letter to Saloon-Keepers.117 

A Letter to Workingmen.122 

A Letter to Women.127 

A Letter to a Beer Advocate.131 










A 

Night 
In a 
Saloon 


\ 


/ 


A Night In a Saloon 


M Y GOOD horse Roos and I had 
stretched our day's journey beyond 
the near limits of endurance be¬ 
cause the day was so delightful, the ride 
through the Wisconsin lake country so 
charming, and because of a desire on my 
part to spend one more night at the pretty 
village whose name was intermingled with 
some of the pleasantest memories of the 
old log house in the clearing, my child¬ 
hood’s home. In those pioneer days the 
name of this village conjured in my child¬ 
ish imagination an aroma of devoutness, a 
flavor of piety, on account of certain 
saintly men and women who were wel¬ 
comed to our home fireside from its 
vicinity. 

These childish associations had been 
enhanced by several subsequent visits in 
my maturity. Whether I sought it afoot, 
on horseback, or in wagon, it was the same 
rural hamlet, undisturbed by the whistle 

[ 9 ] 



On The Firing Line 


of the locomotive, unsoiled by the debris of 
railway stations, rejoicing in velvety green 
lawns, basking beside a charming little 
lake. It was still suggestive of domestic 
purity, economic simplicity, financial pros¬ 
perity and social integrity. 

As might have been expected, on the 
outskirts of this village there was a suc¬ 
cessful boys’ school, an ideal place for 
such; a place where perplexed city parents 
might send their boys with minimum anx¬ 
iety, for seemingly it was a place far 
removed from temptations and vicious 
surroundings. 

But I was not the only one who had 
yielded to the attractions of the charming 
village on that beautiful summer night. 
Although it was yet early, I found the 
little town full of other visitors who had 
escaped from the city; the limited accom¬ 
modations of the old-fashioned hotel, the 
one hostelry of the village, were already 
exhausted, and I was driven to seek shelter 
for the night in the new saloon on the cor¬ 
ner, with a hotel attachment, fresh in its 
[ 10 ] 



A Night In a Saloon 


white paint and green blinds. The pro¬ 
prietor was a gentlemanly, intelligent, 
courteous young Americanized German. 
The hospitality of his spirit was genuine, 
and he was sorry to inform me that “the 
few hotel rooms up stairs” were already 
occupied. The equally attractive and 
kindly young wife, with her pretty first¬ 
born in her arms, who was called into 
council, thought she might find a spare 
room in some one of the adjoining houses; 
at least she was willing to do “the best 
she could” for me. A load of fragrant 
new-mown hay was being unloaded at the 
fresh new barn in the rear of the. premises, 
and Roos had already settled the question 
for herself; she was already sampling the 
goods, and they were palatable; she would 
literally spend her night in clover, and I 
was willing to take my chances. 

Fully an hour elapsed before the young 
wife, who was “doing her own work” all 
the way from the bar to the kitchen stove, 
could begin to see what she could do for 
me, and when the private houses in the 

[ii] 



On The Firing Line 


neighborhood were canvassed she found to 
her dismay that every spare room was 
occupied or spoken for. The case began 
to grow desperate. Finally it settled down 
to the only chance of spending my night 
on the sofa in the “Ladies’ Room” of 
the saloon, with doors opening from the 
big drinking-room on the one hand and 
sliding doors into the dining-room on the 
other. But the furniture was newly bought 
and the room tidy, and the little wife 
assured me she could make me a fairly 
comfortable bed, that things generally 
quieted down about eleven o’clock, and 
that there was no reason why I should not 
be reasonably comfortable. 

I had already noticed on entering that 
the sylvan quality of my pretty hamlet 
was being threatened by the encroachment 
of an interurban trolley line. A gang of 
workmen had reached the outskirts of the 
village, and the laborers, with their big 
boots, sweaty clothes and soiled hands, 
were making the evening business at the 
saloon lively. 


[ 12 ] 



A Night In a Saloon 


It was ten o'clock before the tired horse¬ 
man could horizontalize on his improvised 
bed. He had had two hours and a half to 
watch the business; it was a study in 
sociology, laboratory work on the temper¬ 
ance problem at short range. During the 
two hours and a half he had seen the room 
fill up and the atmosphere grow blue with 
the smoke from stale pipes and all kinds 
of cigars—and all cigars smelled bad to 
him. It did seem as though all sorts and 
conditions of men were gathered there, 
making the dictum of Mr. Calkings, in a 
book of which I shall speak later, ring 
true even in that far-off and clean corner 
of the world, viz, “The saloon is the most 
democratic of institutions; it appeals at 
once to the common humanity of man.” 

First, there came a continuous stream 
of the common shovelers from the railroad 
dump; stolid, foreign, ignorant Italians or 
some other southern European people. 
They came in groups of threes, fives, or 
more, and took their beer in the main in 
glum silence as though it were medicine. 

[ 13 ] 



On The Firing Line 


If they talked at all it was in a dull under¬ 
tone; they took their dose and, for the 
most part, went away. 

Then came the next higher grade of 
laborers — the Americanized, English- 
speaking or American-born teamsters, 
mechanics, bosses, bridge builders and 
cement workers. These were more jolly, 
cordial, boisterous, evidently many of them 
with homes that were tugging at their 
heart-strings; visions of waiting wives and 
watching children flitted before their 
eyes. Once in a while the wistful face of 
wife or child would appear at the door 
and “Yes, dear, wait, I am coming right 
along!” sounded like strange music in the 
place. And these snatches of conversation 
were overheard by the observing but un¬ 
observed “old man” who seemed poring 
over the newspaper in the corner. 

“Come, let’s go, boys.” 

* “Oh, what’s the hurry? Have another 
glass.” 

“Well, I must go!” 

[ 14 ] 



A Night In a Saloon 


“Aw, cut it out! You’re afraid of that 
little woman, are you?” 

“Naw, he’s going to see his girl.” 

The drama had become intensely excit¬ 
ing to the man behind the newspaper. 
Was it comedy or tragedy? They 
slowly thinned out, the jolly crowd leav¬ 
ing at last only the daring, perverse, reck¬ 
less core that grew hilarious over the 
cards, boisterous over the dice that were 
to determine the next treat. 

Later in the evening there came a group 
of boys, schoolboys, bearing the insignia 
of “The Academy;” bright boys, steeped 
in the slang and enthusiasm of the frater¬ 
nities and athletics. They came to talk 
over the excitements of that day’s ball 
game with the visiting team from a town 
fifteen miles away. They frankly dis¬ 
cussed, in high glee, the way they had 
been “done up” by their visitors, who 

“played a-poor game at first” until 

the stakes were placed heavily against 
them; then by a planned accident a new 

[ 15 ] 




On The Firing Line 


boy, an expert, was run in, leaving the 
home team no show. 

But those “nice” boys, whose confiding 
parents had placed them beyond the 
danger of city dissipations, consoled 
themselves over their defeat with the 
thought that they “ought not to kick,” 
for did they not last year make over two 
hundred dollars out of the chaps over 
the seventy-five lost this year by sharp 
tactics on the other side? 

The boys rapidly grew hilarious; a few 
others joined them, and the conversation 
of the little group grew coarse and con¬ 
fidential. They began to give details one 
to another of escapades and experiences 
which would have carried anguish to the 
hearts of fathers and mothers, if they but 
knew. They joked and laughed over that 
which would have ostracized them from 
the social circles that delighted in them, 
were the facts known, but they were facts 
which none of their friends would believe, 
least of all their doting mothers and 

trusting sisters. All of them would 
[ 16 ] 



A Night In a Saloon 


stoutly resent such “groundless insinua¬ 
tions^ of things which those boys openly 
confessed to one another. Nothing but 
facts verified in the police courts would 
establish a credulity in the hairbreadth 
escapes from publicity which were told 
with a relish. 

Now the man behind the paper noticed 
with pain that these were not rough boys, 
the “toughs” of conventional estimate, 
but the “nice” boys; they lighted dainty 
cigarettes, they were choice in their 
drinks, they handled their glasses with 
grace. I easily drew them into conversa¬ 
tion concerning academic and neighbor¬ 
hood matters. Their elegant manners 
ripened promptly into courtesy as they 
asked “Uncle” to have a glass of wine 
with them, and they managed with sus¬ 
tained decorum to urge the humorous 
alternative of a glass of pop. 

As a blot in the background of this 
refinement, behind these representatives 
of city boulevards and avenues came a 
gray-bearded Granger with trousers 

[ 17 ] 



On The Firing Line 


tucked into his tall muddy boots, who car¬ 
ried off in both hands the biggest “schoon¬ 
er” on the shelf filled full of beer (no froth 
for him), to the corner and, with great 
deliberation and apparent satisfaction, 
made it go as far as possible and then stole 
away. Was he the true “temperance 
man” we hear so much about in some 
quarters, the man “who can take a drink 
when he wants it and knows enough to 
stop when he has had enough”? or was 
he, as the boys estimated, “an old cur¬ 
mudgeon, too stingy to join in a social 
glass with anybody, too penurious to 
spare more than a nickel, and determined 
to get his full money's worth?” Some of 
them identified him as a man who had 
lots of dollars up his sleeve. 

After the boys were gone, there came 
into my neighborhood at the far end of 
the counter, the two gentlemen in middle 
life whom I recognized as having passed 
me in the afternoon in a great touring 
car, with ladies. They were from the city, 

fashionably clothed and daintily bar¬ 
ns ] 



A Night In a Saloon 


bered; they were touring through the 
lake country. The ladies had long been 
in bed, resting from the day’s delights, 
while the eyes of their husbands were 
assuming that dull, glazed appearance so 
characteristic of the preliminary stages of 
inebriation. In low, artificial whisper 
they contrived with the barkeeper some 
more refined compound that would give 
the final blow and send them to their beds 
“full.” Out of the bottled depths of the 
refrigerator were fished some bottles of 
porter, and this black, nasty-looking stuff 
was compounded with the lighter beer, 
half-and-half, with a dash of something 
more fiery. 

But these gentlemen from the city did 
not forget their manners; they cour¬ 
teously solicited “Grandpa” to have some¬ 
thing with them, and complimented so old 
a man who could still enjoy horseback 
riding. 

At last the kind-hearted little wife in¬ 
formed me that my bed was ready. Gladly 
did I seek the long-needed repose, inter- 

[ 19 ] 



On The Firing Line 


esting as were the studies in this sociolog¬ 
ical laboratory. My soldier habit of 
sleeping under trying circumstances has 
never deserted me. I was soon sound 
asleep, but it was troubled sleep. In my 
dreams I wandered through burning for¬ 
ests of tobacco trees and waded through 
streets made muddy by sluggish streams 
of beer. Out of these troubled dreams I 
was awakened by a chorus of rough voices 
singing "Annie Laurie,” in the adjoining 
drinking-room. The throng, which at one 
time kept two men busy pumping the 
dirty stuff, had vanished; the respectable 
and occasional drinkers were gone; the 
habituals, midnight revelers, alone held 
possession. There was gaming and bois¬ 
terous disputing, mingled with snatches 
of song, all steeped in profanity and vul¬ 
garity, within earshot of my bed; the 
musical and gentle voice of mine host, the 
saloon-keeper, alone was touched with 
sobriety, courtesy and moderation. 

Again I slept, and again after a season 

I was brought up out of the lower depths 
[ 20 ] 



A Night In a Saloon 


by a bright light streaming in through the 
dining-room transom. Some of the rev¬ 
elers had grown hungry; a post-midnight 
meal was being served of such cold meats 
and left-overs as the man might find in the 
woman’s larder. The pot at last boiled, 
and the jolly meal was topped off with 
fragrant coffee. The clock struck one, 
and I slept again. 

When next I was awakened it was by 
the noise of the scrubbing broom, the 
swish of the hose, and the heavy thud of 
the ice-blocks that were being put into the 
refrigerator to keep the next day’s supply 
of beer cold. One day’s work was at last 
ended and another day’s work had begun. 
The work of scrubbing and cleaning was 
on, and the clock struck three. 

Roos and I preferred the early morning 
for travel and midday for rest and sleep. 
By previous arrangement with mine host, 
the night bar-tender was to feed my horse 
at four o’clock and call me at half-past 
four that we might be on the road at five, 

but the full glory of the daylight awak- 
[ 21 ] 



On The Firing Line 


ened me unsummoned. The night man 
was cross and profane; he had forgotten 
his instructions; he called down maledic¬ 
tions upon the “boss” who thought he 
“could stand everything.” I escaped to 
the barn, found the oat-bin, fed my own 
horse, was eager to be away. While Roos 
was eating her breakfast she was startled 
by a disturbance overhead; there was a 
rustle in the mow, a fumbling, rolling, 
and down into the manger tumbled a man. 
Which was most scared, the horse, the 
horse’s owner, or the man himself, I 
know not. Anyhow, the common fright 
made us akin. After rubbing the clover 
dust out of his eyes and brushing the hay¬ 
seeds out of his hair and off his clothing, 
he said: “There are three more bums up 
there! Four of us chaps belong in Mil¬ 
waukee. We came up here to work on 
the trolley line; there are good jobs await¬ 
ing us; I will get three dollars and a half 
a day running a gang of Dagoes, if I ever 

get sobered up. We have been here 
[ 22 ] 



A Night In a Saloon 


three days and we are getting worse and 
worse!" 

Then there was another fumbling in the 
mow and another fellow tumbled into the 
manger. He made short cut of his wants: 
“Say, old man, won't you give us a dime 
to stiffen up on? We have got to get this 
dirty brown taste out of our mouths!" 

Number three dropped down and num¬ 
ber four followed out of the hay mow, and 
then there ensued a friendly and con¬ 
fidential conference of five of us over the 
drink problem, the mow-men contributing 
the teetotal argument and the denuncia¬ 
tion of the saloon. The first spokesman, 
clutching like a drowning man at a pass¬ 
ing straw, which straw he called “Elder" 
at a venture, drew from his pocket a Mil¬ 
waukee fireman's star, which he held vir¬ 
tuously as the last link binding him to his 
better self, the present tie to past respect¬ 
ability. “I say, Elder," he said, “that shows 
you that I was once away 'up in G.' I had 
a fine position in the Fire Department in 
Milwaukee; my people are all right; pol- 

[ 23 ] 



On The Firing Line 


itics did me; the - bosses ousted me 

last spring, and I have been going to the 
devil at a hard gallop ever since, and he 
alone knows whether I will ever stop until 
he gets me for good and all. These boys 
will tell you I have been thinking I better 
put a stop to this foolishness in the middle 
of yon lake. Haven’t I, boys?” And 
there was a gruesome laugh and a “We 
had better all do it” response. 

I do not try to put in the abundant pro¬ 
fanity; I cannot reproduce the frankness 
which brought us five into such close con¬ 
fidences; the horrible sincerity, the grue¬ 
some fraternity of that blighted early 
hour. 

One, two, three of the mow lodgers stole 
away, one by one, before the conversation 
ended, to beg first and then demand the 
“nips” which all regarded as the in¬ 
dispensable condition of a successful 
“straightening up.” Three days ago they 
came with silver in their pockets, and now 
they had not a copper left. One of them 
menacingly said with an oath, “That man 

[ 24 ] 




A Night In a Saloon 


has got to help straighten us up; he has 
taken every cent of our money and he can 
afford it.” 

The first to descend from the mow 
stayed with me until my horse’s breakfast 
was finished; he helped me saddle my 
horse and would fain help me mount. He 
pledged me with tears in his eyes and a 
good grip of his shaking right hand that 
he would get rid of these pals and 
straighten up and be a sober man before 
he ever saw his mother again. 

The sun had risen, the barnyards were 
alive, the gardens were fragrant, farm 
wives were bestirring themselves; the 
ripened harvest fields were inviting the 
harvesters with abundant promise as I 
rode away. How the agony of the men 
from the hay-mow, the disgrace of that 
quartette of robust, handsome young men 
from Milwaukee, the gruesome dreams 
and the more vivid and horrible realities 
of that night in a saloon, blurred the glory 
of that radiant morning, jarred on the 
melody of life, disturbed the serenity of 

[ 25 ] 



On The Firing Line 


what ought to have been another day’s 
ride of unclouded beauty! Was that one 
night’s experience to be taken as a mild, 
innocent, minimum illustration of the 
habitual transactions in a saloon? Here 
was a white saloon in a white country; 
here was the institution at its best. There 
had been no cracking of heads, no shoot¬ 
ing of pistols, no breaking of noses, no 
wrecking of fortunes. The gambling, if 
any, was probably of the mild sort. The 
one policeman of the village had rested 
undisturbed, and there were no court 
scandals for the next day. What, then, is 
the sociological value of the saloon meas¬ 
ured at its best, taken in its most inno¬ 
cent form? 

In 1893 the “Committee of Fifty” was 
organized for the investigation of the 
liquor problem. It consisted of con¬ 
spicuous leaders of thought and action 
throughout the United States. College 
presidents, prominent ministers, men 
identified with great industrial, reforma¬ 
tory and legislative activities were on the 
[ 20 ] 



A Night In a Saloon 


Commission, the President of which was 
Seth Lowe, then President of Columbia 
College; the Vice-President was the late 
lamented Charles Dudley Warner of 
Hartford, the Secretary Prof. Francis G. 
Peabody of Harvard. President Eliot and 
Carroll D. Wright, then head of the De¬ 
partment of Labor at Washington, were 
on the executive committee. Other names 
in the list that attracted the eye were 
those of Felix Adler, Charles G. Bona¬ 
parte, John Graham Brooks, Father 
Conaty, of the Catholic University of 
Washington, William E. Dodge of New 
York, President Ely of Madison, Presi¬ 
dent Gilman of Johns Hopkins, Washing¬ 
ton Gladden, Doctors Munger of New 
Haven and Rainsford of New York, and 
other names of equal prominence. This 
committee promptly subdivided itself into 
small groups to which were assigned spe¬ 
cial phases of the problem. The results of 
these investigations have been given to 
the public from time to time. At least 
three important volumes have been pub- 

[ 27 ] 



On The Firing Line 


lished; the first dealing with the liquor 
problem in its legislative aspects, compiled 
by Frederick H. Wines and John Koran 
under the direction of President Eliot, 
Seth Lowe and James C. Carter. The 
second volume dealt with “The Eco¬ 
nomic Aspects of the Liquor Problem,” 
by John Koran, under the direction of 
Professors Atwater, Farnham, John Gra¬ 
ham Brooks, Carroll D. Wright and 
others. The third was entitled “Substi¬ 
tutes for the Saloon,” by Raymond Calk- 
ings, under the direction of Professors E. 
R. S. Gould, Francis G. Peabody and 
William M. Sloane. Some of the chap¬ 
ters in this book considered the saloon as 
a social center and studied the “lunch 
room and coffee house substitutes,” with 
special studies of conditions in representa¬ 
tive cities—New York, Chicago, St. Paul 
and San Francisco. 

R. L. Melendy, then a sociological stu¬ 
dent at Ann Arbor, under the direction of 
Graham Taylor of the Chicago Commons, 

made for this committee a careful study of 
[ 28 ] 



A Night In a Saloon 


the saloons as social centers in Chicago. 
The results of Mr. Melendy’s study were 
given wide publicity at the time and made 
a deep impression. These academic 
studies were re-enforced by the insistence 
of labor unions, single taxers, sociologists, 
settlement workers and other earnest stu¬ 
dents of economic problems, that the root 
of the temperance evil is an economic one; 
that inebriety is largely brought about by 
the overstrain, the underfeeding, the de¬ 
fective housing of the laboring classes, 
and that no specific remedy will avail 
much until our economics are so modified 
that the conditions of life are more 
hygienic. 

With this contention I have large sym¬ 
pathy, and in my work for temperance I 
have placed heavy emphasis upon it. The 
effects of such studies necessarily lead the 
open mind to at least a generous tolerance 
of the saloon as it exists under present 
circumstances. Such studies call for a 
division of the question, demanding that 
the worker for temperance should begin 

[ 29 ] 



On The Firing Line 


further back; they compel the critic to 
“put himself in the other man's place" and 
look at the world from the standpoint of 
the patron of the saloon, aye, of the victim 
of the saloon. 

It was with no regret at the time and 
with much gratitude afterward that this 
unsolicited emergency gave me an oppor¬ 
tunity to study at first hand the social 
phases of the saloon question under its 
most harmless conditions. 

I have never gone “slumming;" it is a 
business which only experts can profit¬ 
ably pursue, but I am glad that this 
chance was thrust upon me to observe 
the average workings of a saloon under 
exceptionally wholesome conditions. Here 
was a saloon doing regular business under 
fair circumstances, if such words are fit¬ 
ting. If the words “legitimate," “law- 
abiding," “respectable," “decent" are ever 
applicable to any saloon they would seem 
to apply to this one, situated under cir¬ 
cumstances almost idyllic and managed 
by a young man and woman whose voices 

[ 30 ] 



A Night In a Saloon 


ring melodiously in my ear and whose 
courtesies to me and to my horse are 
graciously enshrined in my heart. 

In the light of Mr. Calkings’ character¬ 
ization already referred to, of the saloon 
as the most democratic of institutions, 
and of his studies in this direction—and 
this is a case where a pinch of fact is 
worth a handful of theory—what is the 
sociological value of the saloon? Is it a 
“democratic institution ?” Is it a “poor 
man’s club” that deserves commendation 
at our hands, or at least commands our 
patience? Let the would-be scientific 
man beware lest he be hoisted by his own 
petard. The last man to be lost in glit¬ 
tering generalities is the would-be devotee 
of science. What are the cold, plain facts 
in the case? With all due respect to our 
economists and scientific sociologists, is 
it not plain that the primal cause of the 
saloon is not economic but a wanton in¬ 
dulgence of an appetite for stimulants, 
which is as imperious and destructive to 
the man in the automobile as to the man 

[ 31 ] 



On The Firing Line 


in the mow? Both parted with their 
money, their judgment and their self 
respect for that which did them no good, 
and they knew that it did them no good. 
Imperfect environment may and does 
help feed, but does not create this appe¬ 
tite, and still less is the environment of 
the poor man ameliorated or improved by 
its indulgence. The inspiration of the 
saloon is now and always has been the 
liquor in it; the heart of it is in the bottle; 
the live serpent in the bottle is the stim¬ 
ulant, alcohol; “fire water,” the Indians 
call it; aqua fortis, the strong water, it 
was once called. And in the light of 
experience and the growing conviction of 
science, this alcohol is an intruder in the 
body, an enemy of society, a menace to 
the State. It gratifies a morbid appetite 
and grows on what it feeds on. Socio¬ 
logically, physiologically, ethically, it is 
bad from A to Z. So far as it goes it is 
demoralizing, disintegrating and degrad¬ 
ing in its influence, and any tendency to 
be indulgent of its use, to give it the free- 

[ 32 ] 



A Night In a Saloon 


dom of the home or the city, is indulgence, 
not liberality. This tendency to apologize 
for the saloon because there is something 
worse than the saloon is not keeping up 
with the times, but it is harking back to 
a worse time when the horrible stuff de¬ 
bauched life more than it does now, when 
it was a disturbing element up and down 
the social ladder to a far greater extent 
than now. To foster and multiply the 
saloons is to go back and down toward 
the time when the old lords proved their 
hospitality and enjoyed their conviviality 
by drinking themselves under the table, 
and the last man up was the best fellow. 
The practices and indulgences fostered by 
the American saloon under any conditions 
have made and still make for the ruin of 
the individual, the defeat of the school, 
the disgrace of the church and the burden 
of the State. The American saloon, per¬ 
haps I ought to say the Anglo-Saxon 
saloon, is an unique institution; it stands 
apart in its coarseness, its filth, its vul¬ 
garity and its damnable alliances. It finds 

[ 33 ] 



On The Firing Line 


no counterpart in the sunny, music- 
haunted, truly social centers, the wine and 
beer cafes and gardens of the continent, 
where respectable men and women go and 
carry their children, without taint of dis¬ 
grace or suspicion of prurient or debauch¬ 
ing intent. 

The protecting ordinances and laws of 
America preventing the admission of 
women, children and the unwary to the 
saloon, the screened doors, the sneaking 
sense of shame with which one enters, find 
their European parallel only in the real 
dens of vice, the confessed homes of 
debauchery, which are in disgraceful evi¬ 
dence in European as well as American 
cities. 

I submit that the American saloon as a 
social center is not worthy of our respect 
or our tolerance so long as it is a place 
into which a man hesitates to take his 
wife, or where he would be sorry to see 
his boys go, so long as it is a place where 
such vices as profanity, vulgar speech, 
vicious politics, gambling and the^un- 

[ 34 ] 



A Night In a Saloon 


blushing cultivation of the lewd imagery 
and ribald tongue that lead to the degra¬ 
dation of women and the defamation of 
the home, find shelter there. 

Scientifically, economically, politically, 
ethically, the American saloon at its best, 
even the white saloon in “Spotless Town 
by the Lake,” is a place where the appetite 
for strong drink and its attendant stimu¬ 
lants are not only gratified but fostered, 
and, as such, first, last and all the time, it 
is a cancer in the body politic and, like all 
cancers, it has as yet baffled all treatment 
except that of the surgeon’s knife. The 
X ray, as claimed by some, may amel¬ 
iorate it; at certain incipient stages it may 
blight it to its death, but the only sov¬ 
ereign treatment for cancer that as yet 
commends itself to the honest practitioner, 
the truly scientific man, is the capital one. 
There are conditions when life can be 
saved only by the amputation of the dis¬ 
eased parts. 

Consequently I rejoice in the many 

tokens that the same conviction increas¬ 
es] 



On The Firing Line 


ingly prevails in regard to the social cancer 
with men of science and men of business, 
the true politicians and the real states¬ 
men, those who have the well-being of the 
State really at heart, without the limita¬ 
tions of dogmatic narrowness or Puritanic 
grimness. Slowly but surely the saloon is 
being eliminated from American life; an 
ever increasing area is being legislated by 
a popular, intelligent vote, out of the reach 
of the saloon, and there are no signs that 
this elimination is to prove transient; 
there are no indications of reactionary ten¬ 
dencies where the reform is once achieved. 

Everywhere there are indications that 
popular intelligence is beginning to accept 
the slow but sure conclusions of science, 
the accumulating testimony of history, 
that alcohol drinking is bad; that the 
saloon is an unsocial center which vitiates 
the common life of the community, mili¬ 
tates against the harmony of the home 
and depreciates the vitality of the indi¬ 
vidual. 


[ 36 ] 



A Night In a Saloon 


I am speaking of no particular type of 
saloon; I am speaking of the bad, degrad¬ 
ing influences that gather around all bib¬ 
ulous centers, which foster convivial hab¬ 
its all the way up and down the social 
scale, whether it be the club man’s private 
wine locker, by which he evades the law, 
or the alley saloon with its dirty beer mug. 
There is an ordinance in the city of San 
Francisco which makes illegal the use in 
the saloon of tumblers with heavy bot¬ 
toms because they make too efficient 
weapons for cracking skulls. It may be 
a far cry from the saloon where a heavy 
glass tumbler is against the law because 
it is an added menace to life, to the swell 
elegancies of the club where the wealthy, 
the prosperous, the masters of abundance, 
clink their glasses in defiance to law and 
order, seeking to make lawlessness re¬ 
spectable by the elegance of their cloth, 
the abundance of the silks and satins that 
rustle around their drinking tables. But 
all these belong not to the advanced 
sociology of the twentieth century; they 

[ 37 ] 



On The Firing Line 


are, rather, belated survivals of the 
baronial dissipations of mediaeval times; 
they are reminiscences of feudalism and 
the debauchery that was thinly masked 
by the valor and the courtesies of a chiv¬ 
alry made necessary by the coarseness 
that trampled under foot the rights of the 
lowly, the purity of women and the honor 
of children. 

This is not necessarily a discussion of 
the question of total abstinence, though I 
have convictions on this question based on 
a life-long practice. The question of the 
saloon is not even the question of pro¬ 
hibition. If any considerable number 
desire to drink the stuff, even to their 
degradation and death, they may be per¬ 
mitted so to do if they can get their 
“drinkables” in the same way as they get 
their eatables—in portable packages with 
no provision made for the consumption of 
the same on the premises. The dispensary 
system, which I have studied at short 
range in South Carolina, where it has been 
more thoroughly tried than anywhere 

[ 38 ] 



A Night In a Saloon 


else in this country, was ethically and 
economically a vast improvement on the 
saloon system, but it broke down because 
of the simple fact that the humanity of 
South Carolina was not sufficiently ethical 
to stand the financial temptations involved 
therein. The opportunities for boodling 
and the temptations for graft proved too 
great for the office-holders of that State. 
It was the greed for money, not the greed 
for drink, that made scandalous the law 
and necessitated its repeal. 

What can we do about it? What ought 
to be done about it? Obviously we must 
put ourselves in line with the more ad¬ 
vanced thought and the more lofty prac¬ 
tices in this direction. The lessons of the 
laboratory must be heeded and the dictum 
of science enforced. Children must be 
educated to feel the awful physiological 
and economic waste in this matter. It 
becomes every good citizen to stand out 
with the men and movements that look 
toward the abolition of the blighting curse 
of the nasty stuff. It becomes us to stand 

[ 39 ] 



On The Firing Line 


up to be counted whenever opportunity- 
offers; to cast off the leading strings of 
effete parties and their bosses and to take 
hold of this most practical reform in the 
most practical way. 

And next, so far as possible, it is for 
such to exploit all the substitutes for the 
saloon that are available. The churches 
of the land are already equipped with the 
high outfit for this high competition. 
Where there is an opportunity for a glass 
of beer with a biscuit and a slice of 
bologna thrown in for five cents, let the 
church forces of the community see to it 
that in as close proximity as possible to 
this saloon there is a chance to get a cup 
of coffee for a cent, a doughnut for 
another, a sandwich for two cents. Where 
the saloons offer a stool let the churches 
offer a chair, plus cheerful lights, checker 
boards, pool tables, cards—anything ex¬ 
cept the insidious intoxicants that tempt 
the boys, the young men, the homeless, 
and the bums who frequent the corners. 
Let these waifs be wooed into the benign 

£ 40 ] 



A Night In a Saloon 


havens, away from the malign lairs of vice 
and crime. 

Would such coffee houses, lunch count¬ 
ers and buttermilk saloons pay expenses? 
At first, no; decidedly no! But the ex¬ 
pense of one jail deliverance would pay 
the cost of one such experiment for a 
month. Said Horace Mann, “No price is 
too high to save a boy, if that boy is my 
boy.” 

Would these experiments succeed? 
Would they draw? Probably not at first. 
They certainly never have succeeded, be¬ 
cause they have never been tried in any 
forceful, persistent fashion. All the great 
triumphs of the laboratory have been born 
out of repeated, costly, tiresome, dis¬ 
couraging failures, and the triumphs of 
the social laboratory can come in no other 
way and at no cheaper price. 

But a truce to all these incidental dis¬ 
cussions. Eliminate the preachments, the 
prescriptions and the prophecies, if you 
please, but do not dismiss with flippancy 
this story of a night in a saloon. Believe 

[ 41 ] 



On The F i r i n g Line 


me to be an honest reporter, and you will 
readily see what I realize, that I have 
failed to put adequate color into my story. 
I did not and could not do justice to the 
horrible revealments. 

Do not forget that I have presented you 
the saloon in its most innocent aspect, a 
feeble type of the seven thousand or more 
such places that are open every night in 
the week in the city of Chicago alone, en¬ 
ticing boys, husbands, brothers, neighbors. 

Is it not worth while, then, to try in 
any way, in every way possible, to bring 
ourselves and the community up and for¬ 
ward to the front lines of the twentieth 
century civilization rather than hark back 
to the weaknesses, the indulgences of a 
more ignorant past and a less developed 
intelligence? 


[ 42 ] 



Two 

Neighbors 





















































































































































































Two Neighbors 


1 WANT to tell of two neighbors with 
whom my acquaintance extended over 
half a century, during all of which 
time I enjoyed their confidence and, to a 
large degree, their companionship and 
comradeship. They were real neighbors— 
kind, accommodating, willing, helpful and 
courteous. They were humble, modest 
neighbors, to whom no toil was mean or 
unwelcome. Though always needing a 
day's work and glad of the money in¬ 
volved, they ever put a touch of neighborly 
kindness, disinterested comradeship, a 
desire to oblige, into their tasks. In every 
such exchange I think there was on both 
sides an unestimated quantity of good will 
which was never rendered in the account¬ 
ing. 

The lives of these neighbors were hum¬ 
ble, rural, retiring and obscure. My rela- 

£ 45 ] 



On The Firing Line 


tion to them was necessarily intermittent, 
uneventful, commonplace, and so unim¬ 
portant to the big world outside that it is 
almost a breach of confidence, an offense 
to the proprieties to think, much less 
speak of them to the busy, bustling world 
far removed from the beautiful, quiet, 
homelike little country graveyard where 
now the dust of my two neighbors rests 
in peace. The snows of winters, the flow¬ 
ers of summers, have rested on their 
tombs. And still my love for them pleads 
for a memorial word, demands a funeral 
sermon that has not been preached. 

The full lesson of their lives, rendered 
plain by death, could not of course have 
been spoken in that country-side, but now, 
with the neighborhood courtesy, family 
sensitiveness and personal acquaintance 
all eliminated, I can, without breach of 
confidence, divulge as much of the story 
of “Bob” and “Billy” as will enable them 
through it to speak the words they often 
whisper in my ear to a brotherhood far 

* [ 46 ] 



Two Neighbors 


beyond their wildest dreams or furthest 
ken when alive. 

While I would shield them with silence 
and shroud them with the courtesies of 
love and respect, the voice of conscience, 
an accusing voice, like that in the story of 
old, says to me, “Where are thy broth¬ 
ers ?” I must speak, then, for “The voice 
of their blood crieth unto me from the 
ground.” And I am sure I shall be par¬ 
doned by their spirits and their friends for 
lifting the curtain just a little that through 
me they may minister to the solemn truth 
to which their sad experiences witness. 

“Bob” was a harmless citizen, a kindly 
neighbor, handy around the house; one of 
those men who had a woman’s touch; he 
could wash, iron, mop the floor, put the 
kitchen in order and, at need, prepare a 
palatable meal. He was a man to help in 
time of strain, whether the strain was in 
the farmhouse, garden or harvest field. 
He was ready to piece out the widow’s 
strength in her little garden plot, to mow 
her lawn and trim her trees, and equally 

[ 47 ] 



On The Firing Line 


willing to take his pitchfork at the straw- 
pile and work at the dusty end of the 
threshing machine. Through many years 
of our midsummer life at Tower Hill, 
“Bob” was the handy man who set the 
cottages in order, who prepared the Pa¬ 
vilion for the big Sunday rallies and 
cleared the debris on the Monday follow¬ 
ing. Children loved “Bob;” women 
trusted him; men, who came with their 
culture, their diplomas and degrees for a 
rest under the trees, recognized that 
“Bob” was something more than a hired 
“hand” to help them out by the hour or by 
the day. 

“Bob” had a vigorous, though a tainted, 
inheritance. “Old Pete,” the father, was a 
jolly, robust, cheerful, competent Welsh 
pioneer who came into the lead regions of 
Wisconsin in the early days. He was one 
of the best known and most indispensable 
hands in the shot-tower industries of pre¬ 
railroad days at “Old Helena,” which, by 
the strange mutations of western life, were 
long since translated into the comforts and 

[ 48 ] 



Two Neighbors 


non-material industries of the Tower Hill 
Encampment. The shaft down which “Old 
Pete” used to drop the molten lead as 
death-dealing shot now yields the life-giv¬ 
ing water which the winds lift to the top 
of the hill that it may be distributed to the 
summer cottages of Tower Hill. 

But “Old Pete” was a notorious, boister¬ 
ous drinking man in the later years of his 
life, only out of his cups when they were 
out of reach. And poor “Bob,” the son, 
weaker in body, gentler in spirit, more cul¬ 
tured in manner, inherited the appetite 
and walked in the footsteps of his father. 
I cannot remember when “Bob’s” weak¬ 
ness was not understood and accepted as 
inevitable by his sympathetic neighbors. 
“Bob” enlisted in the same artillery com¬ 
pany in which I served, but he was dis¬ 
charged before we ever left the State. 
Whatever the reason may have been that 
was entered upon the roll, the real cause 
was this infirmity, which rendered him 
useless to the government. But “Bob” 
meant well; he was a loyal citizen. In 

[ 49 ] 



On The Firing Line 


after years he prized the comradeship and 
cherished the comrades. In early years he 
faithfully started to the annual reunions, 
but seldom was able to answer to his 
name at roll call, for poor “Bob” was out 
of the service before the bugle sounded, 
and in later years he gave up the attempt 
altogether. 

In due time “Bob” married and built 
himself a comfortable home. He was 
good to his wife and children, who dearly 
loved him. He was respected by all his 
neighbors. But year by year he went on 
earning and drinking; a large part of the 
result of one day’s industry would 
promptly find its way on the next day 
into the tills of the saloon-keepers in the 
village three miles away. The farmers 
around accepted it as a neighborly obliga¬ 
tion to bring poor “Bob” home at night, 
helpless, over the road which a few hours 
before he had traveled with alert and sup¬ 
ple step. Year by year his life grew more 
pathetic. Men smiled, women pitied, chil¬ 
dren joked, but nobody interfered. While 

[ 50 ] 



Two Neighbors 


the temptation and the opportunity re¬ 
mained any interference would seem use¬ 
less; until at last, many years ago now, 
the heart, weary of its persistent fight 
against a deadly poison, gave it up, and 
poor “Bob,” dear “Bob,” was found in a 
village haymow, into which he had crept 
to sleep away his helplessness, dead. The 
redeeming sleep had indeed come, the 
sleep that knew no waking. Quietly and 
benignantly the imprisoned spirit was re¬ 
leased from the nagging fetters; the 
tyrannical leash of the flesh was at last 
broken. 

They said it was one of the largest 
funerals known for many years in that 
country-side, and everybody said, and felt 
it too, “Poor Bob! he had no enemy save 
the one fell enemy that undid him.” The 
helpful offices of this kind and gentle man 
were testified to on every side. “Bob” 
had passed beyond the tempter's reach. 
Everybody pitied, and few blamed. His 
memory in that country-side is as green 
as the grass that grows on his grave. His 

[ 51 ] 



On The Firing Line 


record, with the exception of this weak¬ 
ness, is pure as the winter snows that en¬ 
shroud him. 


“Billy,” my other neighbor, had perhaps 
a more promising inheritance. His father 
was an aggressive, efficient, inventive 
Yankee, with a mechanical ingenuity that 
amounted almost to genius. He was the 
last Director of the shot-tower at Old 
Helena, under whose skillful management 
the manufacture of shot was brought to 
what, in the ante-bellum days, was a sur¬ 
prising state of perfection. “Billy” inher¬ 
ited much of his father’s ingenuity and 
mechanical skill. He was wonderfully 
handy with tools of every kind. He was 
“Jack of all trades” for Tower Hill; could 
build a stone wall, patch a roof, paint a 
house, or lay a carpet. The neighbors 
would accept as accurate “Billy’s” esti¬ 
mate of a wood lot or a plowed field when 
he had paced it. He was full of wood¬ 
craft; he knew the haunts and habits of 
the wild animals; he was the last of the 

[ 52 ] 




Two Neighbors 

trappers in that country-side. He was the 
lone fisherman, and the fish diet of Tower 
Hill ran low when “Billy” forgot or 
neglected to set his lines. 

Nature meant “Billy” to be a hand¬ 
some, well-bodied, efficient man, but some 
untoward accident in babyhood marred 
the delicate mechanism, and the splendid 
column that would have lifted the hand¬ 
some curly head into the full proportions 
of a man doubled in upon itself, making 
of “Billy” a human interrogation point, 
a grotesque little hunchback. But the 
clear blue eye, the melodious and winning 
voice, the self-respecting soul, gave an 
astonishing degree of muscular vigor and, 
as I have already hinted, of manual 
efficiency to the thwarted body. 

In due time “Billy” married and made 
for himself a valley home. He had the 
best garden in the neighborhood; he mar¬ 
keted the earliest melons; he might have 
had a comfortable and happy home, but 
he became an “habitual.” I cannot re¬ 
member when “Billy's” regular visits to 

[ 53 ] 



On The Firing Line 


the village were not taken as a matter of 
course. He could earn money easily. He 
did earn much, but most of it went to the 
unsavory and unattractive, nasty little 
saloons in the village, and everybody took 
it for granted that it was “Billyh” right 
to waste himself, to jeopardize the future 
of his children, to darken his little home¬ 
stead with the blight that hangs over a 
drunkard’s home, and that it was the right 
of these saloon-keepers to take from his 
helpless hands his hard-earned money, to 
send out of their doors a maudlin, quar¬ 
relsome, helpless man who had come in 
bright, intelligent, self-reliant, a genial 
citizen. 

The neighbors were kind to “Billy” as 
they were to “Bob.” They would pick him 
up along the roadside in his imbecility and 
give him a lift in his helplessness. But 
“Billy’s” splendid inheritance, his clear 
spirit, his otherwise strong will and supe¬ 
rior intelligence, were no match for the fell 
poison which sooner or later makes sure of 
its victim, and at last, in the early gray of 

[ 54 ] 



Two Neighbors 


life, “Billy” sickened. He flattered him- 
self, or concealed his humiliation in the 
thought that he had been poisoned by 
some unwholesome milk drank during an 
absence from home. But the doctor 
knew and all the neighbors surmised what 
“Billy” knew better than any of them, that 
the organs were worn out and were giving 
up the fight; and in the springtime of his 
old age, as of his garden, he slept, and the 
dust of the little body rests in the beautiful 
little cemetery that overlooks the winding, 
unwearying, unhasting river. Here in the 
same quiet “God's Acre” rest the bodies 
of “Bob” and “Billy,” the two “drunk¬ 
ards” of that country-side. It pains me 
to write the word. How it grates upon 
the ear, particularly of those who knew 
and through it all loved and respected 
“Bob” and “Billy!” Through all the long 
years of dissipation, neither of them lost 
the fine sense of honor, the business integ¬ 
rity, the purity of life and, except when 
maddened by drink, the purity of speech 
and the courteous demeanor. Spite of all 

[ 55 ] 



On The Firing Line 


that has been said, the fact must be em¬ 
phatically stated that “Bob” and “Billy” 
were gentlemen, respected by their neigh¬ 
bors, and when I return to my old haunts 
I miss their cordial greeting and their 
hearty welcome. They have a place in the 
line of the absentees whose shadows rise 
benignly before me as I walk or drive 
along those quiet country ways, in the 
shade of those benignant trees and the 
shelter of the protecting bluffs that have 
been and will be my comfort and strength 
from boyhood to the end. 

Because I loved and respected them I 
lay this tribute upon their graves, hoping 
that it will add a touch of sincerity to the 
painful confession I must make. 

I who witnessed the struggle, saw the 
inevitable decline, realized the helpless¬ 
ness of the victims in the bonds of an 
appetite which had long, long since passed 
beyond their control, felt the hopelessness 
of the situation, stood by with listless 
hands with the community of that coun¬ 
try-side, consenting to the earthly damna- 

[ 50 ] 



Two Neighbors 

tion of my two neighbors. I had no vote 
there, but I neighbored with the intelli¬ 
gent men who affected public spirit, and 
who did have votes, and who for forty 
years or more issued official warrant and 
public license, sometimes to four or more 
men in that little rural village of less than 
a thousand souls, to lay their snares and 
bait their traps for “Bob” and “Billy.” 
These four or more men, like all the voters 
of that town and the taxpayers of that 
community, knew that “Bob” and “Billy” 
were as helpless in the presence of their 
temptations as is the lamb in the jaws of 
the wolf. The saloon-keepers, as well as 
all the men who licensed them, knew 
perfectly well that day by day, week by 
week, month by month, year by year, 
through a long lifetime, the hard won 
earnings of these two men went into the 
tills of those who gave in return what 
they knew and everybody knew would 
promptly craze the brain, confuse the 
judgment, stun the senses, bring partial 
paralysis to muscle and nerve, so they 

[ 57 ] 



On The Firing Line 


could not walk or talk straight. The 
saloon-keepers, as well as the men who 
legalized their business, knew also that 
“Bob” and “Billy” were no sociological 
freaks, no exceptional men, unrelated, 
standing alone, but that they were only 
two individual conspicuous types of an 
ever-lengthening line of men in that com¬ 
munity, some of them mere boys, who 
were in training for the same imbecility, 
on the road to the same helplessness. 
“Bob” and “Billy” simply stood at the 
head, perchance, of a staggering proces¬ 
sion, and when the blessed release came 
and the prison gates were thrown open 
and the enslaved went free, there were 
plenty to keep up the business, to close up 
the file, to make “Bob’s” and “Billy’s” 
places good. Those saloon-keepers knew 
and all the voters knew that “Bob” and 
“Billy” had children who suffered from 
the humiliations, who were threatened by 
the gruesome inheritance, and who were 
liable to pass the blighting plague down 
through unborn generations. They knew 

[ 58 ] 



Two Neighbors 


that “Bob” and “Billy” had wives who 
were being humiliated, who were break¬ 
ing their hearts and wearing out their 
lives under the relentless tyranny. 

When the storm gullies a country road 
and pitfalls menace the safety of man or 
beast that travels thereon, the town is 
prompt in repairing the damage; at least, 
knowing its responsibility in the case, it 
hastens to post a danger signal and put a 
fence around the menace while the danger 
lasts. When a bridge is built the town is 
required by law to safeguard it with ade¬ 
quate railing, and in default of these pro¬ 
visions the town is responsible for any 
damages incurred. 

I know the perplexities of the temper¬ 
ance problem; I know the difficulty of 
drawing lines between the responsibility 
and the dependence of the individual, but 
here there can be no doubt that the public 
not only consented to but created the pit- 
falls in the roads over which “Bob” and 
“Billy” traveled. There is no shadow of 
a doubt that for over a quarter of a cen- 

[ 59 ] 



On The Firing Lin e 


tury these men were maimed with defect¬ 
ive organisms. The rickets that deformed 
the body of “Billy” was no more real, 
actual, demonstrable a physical defect 
than the rickets of the will, so closely 
allied thereto, which ma>de it impossible 
for him to go straight by the open door of 
the saloon, or to take that boasted “first” 
glass and then stop, of which the average 
man in his conceit is so proud. The great 
God alone can answer the question, 
“Who did sin, this man or his parents?” 
in regard to our “Bob,” but one thing is 
sure—that all the benign forces in his na¬ 
ture (and they were many), all the re¬ 
straining and helpful forces in his envi¬ 
ronment, including loyal wife, loving chil¬ 
dren and kind neighbors, were inadequate 
to carry him over the bridge to which 
there were no railings. There is no dis¬ 
puting the fact that for many years those 
two neighbors of mine were moral crip¬ 
ples, defectives, unable to care for them¬ 
selves unaided; much more so than if they 

had been blind, deaf, or wanting in legs 
[ 60 ] 



Two Neighbors 


or arms. And there is no disputing the 
further fact that had their defects been 
of this latter kind, the community, not 
only by private beneficences but by civic 
forethought, would have pieced out their 
deficiencies, shielded them from danger, 
and helped them through the mazes of the 
world. 

It is with pain and humiliation, then, 
that I confess that I as a neighbor failed 
in my neighborly obligations, and still 
more guilty would I have been if I had 
had the rights of a citizen neighbor and 
had still not persistently and continuously 
interposed a helping, guiding and prevent¬ 
ing hand. I believe that the voters of that 
little hamlet egregiously failed in their 
duty when they failed to shield and direct 
those crippled neighbors of theirs and 
mine. 

Here, then, we have the saloon problem 
in a nutshell, a concrete illustration of the 
general situation. The saloons, which 
so mar the beauty, sanity and respectabil¬ 
ity of that village, helped debauch and 
[ 61 ] 



On The Firing Line 


continued to pauperize my two neighbors, 
and they were permitted to continue their 
fell work until they had secured the last 
nickel, drained to the dregs the cup of 
life of “Bob” and “Billy,” which dregs 
indeed they helped make bitter as gall and 
wormwood. 

Now these little tragedies of the coun¬ 
tryside, this spiritual calamity that befell 
two innocent farm neighbors of mine, 
that steeped in woe two little homes in 
obscure little valleys of Wisconsin, three 
miles away from no place, is typical. The 
story of “Bob” and “Billy” is duplicated in 
every hamlet, multiplied by ten in every 
small city, and by tens of thousands in 
every great metropolis. The saloons every¬ 
where, in the big city as well as in the 
rural railway station, are in the man-de¬ 
stroying business, and the very attempt to 
hedge them about with license and police 
regulation arraigns their business as dan¬ 
gerous, classes the saloon-keepers as traf¬ 
fickers in poison, as men who menace the 

well-being of the community. We do not 
[ 62 ] 



Two Neighbors 


have to license the selling of cheese or of 
bread, but we do have to circumscribe in 
every way possible the trade in prussic 
acid, morphine, calomel, nitro-glycerin 
and alcoholic compounds of every descrip¬ 
tion. 

Now the licenses, which are really de¬ 
signed to circumscribe the power of the 
saloons for evil, to limit their nefarious 
influence, but which actually contribute 
to the indifference and complacency of 
conscience on behalf of the voter and the 
taxpayer, are justified only on one or 
more of these three possible counts, viz: 

1. That the license money is a civic 
convenience, perchance a corporate neces¬ 
sity; without it the modern city could not 
sustain its police systems or adequately 
support its schools. 

2. The drink habit is so persistent, the 
appetite for stimulants so universal, the 
demand for grog so imperative, that it 
cannot be suppressed, hence must be con¬ 
trolled. The saloons are licensed that 

[ 63 ] 



On The Firing Line 


they may be held in leash; they are listed 
that they may be watched, curbed and 
controlled. 

3. The state must not interfere with 
the liberty of choice. We have no right 
to make men sober or virtuous by law, we 
are told. This is the Personal Liberty 
claim. 

These three defenses, studied in the 
light of recent developments, analyzed by 
the help of latest science and the growing 
experience of communities, seem to render 
something like the following conclusions: 

First, the revenue argument. To state 
it is to condemn and refute it. What, 
license a saloon in order to get money to 
pay for the police force and courts neces¬ 
sary to handle the petty crimes whith the 
saloons have chiefly created? The ex¬ 
pensiveness of the constabulary, jails, 
prisons, fire departments, which every¬ 
body knows are largely made necessary 
by the fell work of the saloon, has been 
presented so often that our ears have 
grown dull to it. I am sure there are well- 

[ 64 ] 



Two Neighbors 


meaning saloon-keepers, possibly decent 
saloons, but none are more willing than 
those saloon-keepers who believe in a de¬ 
cent saloon to admit that their business is 
allied to lawlessness, coarseness and 
crime. And no one knows better than 
those saloon-keepers that a saloon busi¬ 
ness kept within the limits of decency, as 
they themselves understand it, is a losing 
business. A law-abiding saloon-keeper is 
foreordained to bankruptcy. The time 
was when honest business men were solic¬ 
itous for the prosperity of the town that 
was bereft of its saloons. They looked 
upon an anti-saloon agitation as a menace 
to trade; but that much-threatened 
“green grass” that used to grow in the 
streets in the “Dry” town has withered 
long ago. A thousand towns in the Mis¬ 
sissippi valley have disproved the foolish 
theory. Villages and cities without num¬ 
ber are growing prosperous, happy and 
jolly on every hand without the saloon 
and confessedly on account of its absence. 

The second justification of the license, 

[ 65 ] 



On The Firing Line 


on the ground that it is the only practical 
thing to do, that saloons must be, that 
drink habits are incurable and must be 
controlled, is also negatived with wonder¬ 
ful efficiency by the most recent studies in 
sociology, founded upon and justified by 
the growing “Dry” territory of the United 
States. Not much longer can a man lay 
claim to intelligence or honesty who in¬ 
sists that a community, large or small, 
must necessarily cater to vice, and that the 
standards of purity and sobriety which the 
individuarbelieves in must be lowered by 
the ordinances of that community. No 
laws are wholly effective; no regulations 
are adequately enforced, but not on that 
account does the wise statesman urge their 
elimination from the statute books. 

The better elements of the community 
have too long truckled to the vicious and 
the dissipated. Politicians have assumed 
that good causes must make friends with 
vice; that even high-minded men must 
sometimes appeal to the saloon and estab¬ 
lish their headquarters in the back rooms 
[ 66 ] 



Two N eighbors 


of the same if they are to win. But that 
time is fast going by. Fortunately, this 
is no longer a question to be settled by 
arguments. There are facts in the case to 
demonstrate that there are more sober 
than dissipated voters in the community; 
that the right-minded can outvote the 
wrong-minded; that the worthy can to a 
degree control and that they should do so 
in the affairs of the community. Just as 
fast as this principle is recognized the 
drunkard-making mill, the insinuating 
pitfalls for our “Bobs” and our “Billys” 
must go, and they will go independently 
of the question of ultimate teetotal ab¬ 
stinence. If one must gratify a lamen¬ 
table love of stimulants, if one's nerves are 
so debauched that he cannot live the 
temperate and sober life, let him secure his 
alcoholic poisons as he does his arsenic 
and other drugs—under the direction of 
his doctor, in packages, to be consumed 
in solitude, reducing thereby their power 
for evil to others and circumscribing their 
dangers to himself to the minimum. 

[ 67 ] 



On The Firing Line 


The times are ripe for experimentation 
on these lines; the call is for sociological 
laboratory work on a large scale. The 
demands of science, of statesmanship, as 
well as of religion, enforce the old sum¬ 
mons of the Bible legend; we are our 
“brothers’ keepers,” and the blood of the 
fallen calls to us from the ground. The 
case is not so hopeless as it seems; the situ¬ 
ation is not so desperate as is urged. The 
city is not always to be a carbuncle on the 
neck of the body politic, a place where de¬ 
generate tissue is inflamed by the precipita¬ 
tion of impurities, but it is to be the flower¬ 
ing of the social organism, the efflorescence 
and fruitage, the finest output on the upper 
branches of the tree of life. We can not 
only do much more than we are now doing 
to save our “Bobs” and our “Billys,” but 
we can greatly decrease the manufacture 
of such. We can put the nefarious busi¬ 
ness in its right light and let it be seen 
that the poor victims of this business are, 
in the last analysis at least, moral crip¬ 
ples, spiritual dwarfs, diseased victims, 
[ 68 ] 



Two Neighbors 


broken men, appealing to us for pity and 
demanding of us remedial treatment. 

The third justification of the saloon— 
the “Personal Liberty” cry, the right of a 
man to debauch himself if he will, also 
demands and is receiving attention. 

What of this? The cry of “Liberty” is 
a popular one in America, and justly so. 
Freedom is a precious achievement, 
bought with a great price. I yield to no 
man in my loyalty to the sacred rights of 
the soul to carve out its own destiny; to 
win its translation through mistakes; to 
rise by virtue of its blunders. The only 
heaven I believe in and hope for is reached 
by the road which passes the entrances to 
hell. Salvation comes only to the soul 
that has escaped damnation. But Liberty 
is no longer a thing of the individual. Per¬ 
sonal liberty ends where public weal be¬ 
gins. My rights stop when they encroach 
upon the rights of the community. De¬ 
mocracy may be not inaptly defined as 
the curbing of the individual's liberty for 
the sake of the public good. It is the mis- 

[ 69 ] 



On The Firing Line 


sion of the State to defend the diseased 
and the defective from the arrogant en¬ 
croachment of the strong and the ade¬ 
quate; to protect the unwary from the 
subtle exploitations of the competent. No 
liberty must be granted to the New Or¬ 
leans householder to leave uncovered his 
cisterns, that breed the deadly mosquito 
in yellow fever time. The multi-million¬ 
aire has no more right than the junk man 
to dump his garbage into the back yard 
that it may breed pestilence. The prince 
and the beggar, the philosopher and the 
fool must respect the ethics of the road, 
the safeguards of the street and the time 
limits. The automobile and the push-cart 
alike must “keep to the right/’ as the law 
directs. In this way only can the freedom 
of the road be secured. The freedom of 
the locomotive is found on the track, not 
in the ditch. It must keep to the rails if it 
is to know the liberty of action. 

Thus it is that slowly but surely the 
logic of the situation is clearing. The 
problem of personal liberty is being 

[ 70 ] 



Two Neighbors 


changed, or rather deepened, into personal 
obligation. The shallow and selfish man 
prates about his “rights;” the profound 
and altruistic man is concerned about his 
duties. The “boss” uses the public; the 
patriot serves the public. We are our 
“brothers' keepers.” The supposed private 
interests, the still more insinuating claims 
of party and prejudices of sect, must give 
way and the community rise in its cor¬ 
porate might and vindicate its freedom, 
which is found only in the sanity of the 
body politic. The whole cannot be un¬ 
mindful of the parts. The foot cannot say 
to the head, “I have no need of thee!” 

A Supreme Judge of the State of Illinois 
has recently been telling the citizens of 
Illinois that they have as good laws as 
they deserve, as wise an administration as 
they have a right to ask for, as noble a 
government as they can enforce. This is 
only half the truth. The other half is 
equally patent. The good people of this 
commonwealth have not expressed them¬ 
selves in their full might, and under pres- 

[ 71 ] 



On The Firing Line 


ent management they cannot thus express 
themselves. The noblest elements of so¬ 
ciety have not yet been adequately con¬ 
sulted, either in the legislative or execu¬ 
tive departments of our country. There 
have been disturbing elements in our civic 
life that have divided the competent, con¬ 
fused the sober, and defeated the worthy. 
Of these disturbing elements I venture to 
mention three. 

1. The sordid anxiety for prosperity; 
the love of gain; the eagerness for profit; 
the horrible debauching of the dollar. 
This induces even church members to 
build and rent houses to debauching in¬ 
dustries; it has inspired mighty combina¬ 
tions of capital to embark in body-destroy¬ 
ing and soul-crippling enterprises. So the 
inspirations that multiply and protect the 
saloon spring chiefly not out of the love of 
stimulants, not even out of the passion for 
society, the commendable need for com¬ 
munion and companionship, but out of the 
love of the dollar. It is not the appetite 

[ 72 ] 



Two Neighbors 


for drink, but the appetite for wealth that 
we have to cope with primarily. 

2. The tyranny of party politics, the 
humiliating slavery of the voter to his 
clique and his clan. The central issue in 
the life of the municipality today is never 
decided on its merits. We are never able 
to rally the forces of sobriety on the one 
hand and of inebriety on the other. The 
would-be friends of temperance, the guar¬ 
dians of the weak and the unwary, are 
constantly found casting their votes for a 
liquor-soaked saloon-keeper in his filth 
and his debauchery, if he belongs to their 
own party, rather than joining issues with 
the noble and the sober in the interest of 
a creditable candidate who belongs to the 
other party, though there be no possible 
party issue at stake. 

Thus at the polls we constantly find 
good men, believers in the home, friends 
of chastity and sobriety, lending them¬ 
selves to the fell task of lifting lecherous 
men into high offices, trusting the lives of 
innocent lambs to the keeping of lascivious 

[ 73 ] 



On The Firing Line 


and debauching wolves who have not even 
the decency to hide their hideousness with 
a cloak of sheepskin. 

3. The wasteful distractions of the 
ethical and religious forces by the secta¬ 
rian spirit have greatly weakened the cor¬ 
porate life of the community, divided the 
high interests of the municipality. The 
commonwealth suffers pitiably from the 
distractions and dissipations of the sects, 
the lack of harmony and co-operation 
among the churches. I do not charge the 
churches with aggressive bigotry and low 
rivalries. Happily the day of sectarian 
bitternesses is largely gone or going. In 
the main, deacons and pastors have quit 
fighting one another, but they have not 
yet learned how to work together heroic¬ 
ally for great civic causes. Their preoccu¬ 
pations in the interest of denominational 
propaganda crowd out the high combina¬ 
tions that would inspire them with cour¬ 
age to save the state and serve the nation. 
There are temperate, sane and saintly peo¬ 
ple enough to make even the greatest 

[ 74 ] 



Two Neighbors 


metropolis go “Dry” in some wise fashion 
in the next five years, if they will only 
have faith enough in themselves and their 
neighbors to trust the inspirations of 
purity, to work together and live together 
for the redemption of the community. 

But I have gone far afield from the two 
graves on the beautiful heights above the 
river in a far-off country-side. I have ven¬ 
tured my tribute of love and respect to my 
two unfortunate neighbors, hoping that it 
might prepare the minds and quicken the 
hearts of a few for more heroic grappling 
with the questions that are concerned with 
the well-being of those still living. In 
comparatively prosperous times, at the 
very heart of the great Mississippi valley, 
when its granaries were overcrowded, the 
products of the field and garden begging 
for purchasers, at a time when market 
prices were low from overproduction, 
when the manufacturers and bankers were 
gleefully predicting a prompt return of 
prosperity and boastfully exhibiting the 
figures of increasing deposits and expand- 

[ 75 ] 



On The Firing Line 


ing exchanges, a calm and critical commis¬ 
sion reported five thousand hungry and 
ten thousand underfed children attending 
the public schools of Chicago. And the 
major causes of this suffering were trace¬ 
able to the seductions of the nasty, un¬ 
wholesome, unsocial saloon. 

What is to be done under such circum¬ 
stances? There is great danger that the 
weakest, wickedest thing possible will be 
done because it is the easiest thing to do, 
viz, that the lazy, overfed, underworked, 
indulgent children of prosperity, pricked 
into temporary shame, will be allowed to 
pour out their soup-house charities in cer¬ 
tain congested and hungry districts. 
Could the sufferers be thus reached it 
would be mediaeval benevolence, blight¬ 
ing both receiver and giver, bargaining for 
greater wretchedness than ever. Give five 
thousand children their breakfasts for a 
month, either from private or public char¬ 
ity, and there will be eight thousand clam¬ 
oring for the breakfasts next month, and 
many of the breakfasted children will be 

[ 76 ] 



T w o Neighbors 


asking for a dinner also; and before a 
winter season is over long lines of fathers 
and mothers, as well as children, will be 
waiting for the gruesome bread-wagon to 
appear. 

Chicago, in this emergency just spoken 
of, did the wiser thing. No bread was 
given to a hungry child until its case had 
been investigated by a competent repre¬ 
sentative of the commonwealth, and when 
by such investigation the cause was dis¬ 
covered it was largely remedied. It was 
easily demonstrated that a painful number 
of these children were hungry because 
their bread-money had been converted into 
beer-money. The brewers and distillers of 
Chicago had deposited in the banks the 
money that should have nourished the 
pale, pathetic school children. 

But another percentage of these chil¬ 
dren were traced into homes where there 
was no money either for beer or bread, for 
the earning capacity of one or both par¬ 
ents was gone. They were the children 
of the “Bobs” and the “Billys” of Chi- 

[ 77 ] 



On The Firing Line 


cago; those who had been debauched by 
the mug and the pipe, twin poisons that 
debilitate the nerves, weaken the wills, 
and make men old before their time. 

There was still another percentage of 
these ten thousand underfed children who 
were discovered to be the victims of eco¬ 
nomic injustice; children of hard-working 
men and women who were under-paid, 
honest factors in the industrial life of Chi¬ 
cago, or who had been thrown out of their 
jobs by the emergencies of vicious finan¬ 
ciering and plunging capitalists. These 
capitalists had perhaps saved their bank 
deposits by shutting down the mill or 
reducing the wages, regardless of the 
moral claim of their unrecognized partners 
in the business, those who had built 
homes, reared children, invested their 
lives; skilled laborers, indispensable fac¬ 
tors in the business in whose control they 
had no voice, and who in dire crises must 
look elsewhere for relief. 

Now, by whatever means this hunger 
has come about, whether by misuse of 

[ 78 ] 



Two Neighbors 


wages, incapacity to work from debauch¬ 
ery, or a lack of opportunity to exchange 
honest sweat for honest bread, there is but 
one course of action worthy a civilized 
community, and that is to trace the hunger 
to its fell source and bring to bear the 
cleansing, renovating stream of civic 
power as well as private benevolence, the 
redeeming enthusiasms of religion. Here 
the highest liberty which can be accorded 
is the liberty to deny one's self in the in¬ 
terest of the well-being of the weakest. 

Let the story of “Bob” and “Billy” give 
us courage. Let no one be paralyzed by 
the magnitude of the job. Do not tell me 
it is too big an undertaking to save such 
good men; that there is not time, money 
or skill enough for such thorough and 
radical work, and that consequently there 
is nothing left but to do a little emergency 
work and order out the sandwich wagon. 

This task would be too great for a city 
of barbarians, or a nation of unorganized, 
segregated, disintegrated, detached indi¬ 
viduals, distrustful of one another, unac- 

[ 79 ] 



On The Firing Line 


customed to co-operative action, dull to 
public interest, jealous of their individual 
rights, careless of common weal, but it is 
an easy task to a civilized community, to 
an organized brotherhood, to Citizens who 
are through with the Cain-like evasions of 
responsibility, who have learned that they 
are their “brothers’ keepers,” who are will¬ 
ing to take up the task of brotherly serv¬ 
ice, to bend the line of their individual 
rights into the circle of their common re¬ 
sponsibility. 

Such Citizens will not always hear the 
taunt that comes up from the ground; 
they will become voters from whose brows 
has been removed the mark of Cain. 


F.80] 



The 

Flanking 
Columns 
In the War 
for Sobriety 












































































































































































































































































































The Flanking Columns 


O N AN early morning in November, 
1863, General Braxton Bragg, Com¬ 
mander of the Confederate forces, 
and the lady at whose house he had estab' 
lished his headquarters, were looking down 
from the crest of Missionary Ridge upon 
the beleaguered city of Chattanooga, where 
the half-starved Union army under Gen¬ 
eral Thomas was apparently hopelessly 
besieged. Their nearest post of supplies 
was thirty miles away; the banks of the 
Tennessee river between Chattanooga 
and Bridgeport were so infested by gueril¬ 
las and scouts of the enemy that it was 
unavailable for transportation purposes, 
and the road of bottomless mud was cor¬ 
duroyed with the dead bodies of the 
patient mules that had fallen in their 
tracks, unable to go further. The luckless 

[ 83 ] 



On The Firing Line 


army was enclosed by a bristling horse¬ 
shoe of batteries, reaching from Lookout 
Mountain on the river to the west, to the 
end of Missionary Ridge at the mouth of 
Chickamauga Creek on the east. 

The Confederate army was in comfort¬ 
able winter quarters on the well fortified 
heights, with ample stores in the immedi¬ 
ate rear, unmenaced railroad connections 
into the heart of the Confederacy and un¬ 
broken telegraphic connection with the 
capital city of Richmond. Said the lady: 

“General, what would you want me to 
do if some day we were to see those Union 
soldiers down there climbing this Ridge 
to the crest and putting your army to 
flight?” 

“Take no alarm, madam,” replied the 
confident general, jauntily. “There is no 
danger; we have got the Yanks bottled; 
they are starving down there now. 
Thomas’ army is discouraged; mine is 
well fed, comfortable, enthusiastic. We 
have got them. General Sherman’s army 

[ 84 ] 



The Flanking Columns 


that marched across the state of Tennes¬ 
see from Memphis to the relief of Thomas, 
whose camp fires made the Wahatchie 
valley west of Lookout Mountain brilliant 
a few nights ago, has given it up. He is 
too good a general to add his army to the 
starving forces of Thomas. He has 
crossed the Tennessee River and is now on 
his way to the relief of Knoxville. Do not 
disturb yourself in imagining the impos¬ 
sible.” 

In some such words as these it is re¬ 
ported did the gallant and dauntless 
Bragg comfort his hostess; and, in jus¬ 
tice to the brave commander, let it be 
said that these words were no idle boast; 
circumstances seemed to justify his con¬ 
fidence; for Chattanooga at this crisis was 
one of the few points where the Confed¬ 
erate forces had clearly the advantage in 
numbers, military supplies and strategic 
position. It was one of the few times 
when the Union army was successfully 
besieged. If ever a general was justified 
in assuming his position invulnerable, 

[ 85 ] 



On The Firing Line 


General Bragg was so justified at Chatta¬ 
nooga. His army had already measured 
forces with the enemy; he had outwitted 
and outfought him; he had him where he 
wanted him and had good reason to be¬ 
lieve that he could starve him or crush 
him, as he chose. 

But how little can the wisest know of 
the nature and character of his foes! How 
fallible is the keenest sagacity, how in¬ 
adequate the most prudent foresight, for— 

“The best laid plans o’ mice and men 
Gang aft agley.” 

At that very moment, when the words 
of the General were so reassuring to the 
widow, Hooker was marshaling his charg¬ 
ing column at the foot of Lookout Moun¬ 
tain, and Sherman’s forces, which General 
Bragg thought moving rapidly toward 
Knoxville, a hundred or more miles away, 
to meet which he had detached some of 
his best fighting men under Longstreet 
some days before, were in fact hidden 
away just north of Waldron Ridge, within 

earshot of Bragg’s picket posts and within 
[ 86 ] 



TheFtanking Columns 


sight of the bivouac fires that gleamed on 
Missionary Ridge. 

What transpired is now world-famous 
history. Very soon, Hooker’s well-fed, 
well - clothed, well - directed re-enforce¬ 
ments were fighting among the clouds, 
above which at last the stars and stripes 
were seen floating, soon to be planted on 
the boldest crest of Lookout Mountain. 
The “impregnable” had been taken. Mean¬ 
while, in the still midnight hours, Sher¬ 
man was throwing his pontoon bridge 
across the river to Bragg’s right, and the 
rebel pickets, sleeping in a sense of perfect 
security, awoke to find themselves pris¬ 
oners before they had fired a shot, and 
Bragg discovered the startling fact that 
Sherman’s forces, toughened by the mili¬ 
tary campaigns in Mississippi and disci¬ 
plined by the siege of Vicksburg, had 
flanked his army on the right as Hooker 
had flanked it on the left. 

Meanwhile the beleaguered Thomas 
had not moved. His starving army was 
watching in breathless anxiety; the 

[ 87 ] 



On The Firing Line 


psychological moment had not yet arrived; 
but when it did, the hungry men arose, 
and that historic charge, unordered and 
unled by officers, transpired. With unex¬ 
pected prowess the men climbed the bris¬ 
tling front of Missionary Ridge and, per¬ 
haps as much to the surprise of their own 
generals as that of the opposing leaders, 
found themselves in possession of the 
enemy's rifle pits. The courage displayed 
in this charge of Thomas' army was 
psychological, not physical, for the files 
of Bragg had already been thinned into a 
skirmish line in order to meet the unex¬ 
pected flanking columns of Sherman and 
Hooker. 

Happily, the clash of arms is heard no 
more among the mountains of Tennessee. 
These United States no longer agonize 
over a cruel fratricidal war. Thank 
heaven, the scouting, raiding, charging 
and flanking, on the low levels of physical 
force, are over! God grant that they may 
be forever over. Lookout Mountain and 

Missionary Ridge now constitute a na- 
[ 88 ] 



The Flanking Columns 


tion’s playground, a beautiful sanitarium 
for invalids. Little children play among 
the crumbling embrasures and birds build 
their nests and rear their young in the 
mouths of the neglected cannon. The 
stars and stripes are saluted lovingly and 
loyally by the children of the South and 
the North. The rusty remnants of the 
regiments of Bragg and “Pap” Thomas 
meet in genial reunion on what were once 
the rampired heights. Shoulder to 
shoulder the wearers of the gray and of 
the blue keep time to the one band which 
now plays “Glory, glory, hallelujah!” and 
anon plays “Dixie.” 

And still, this is no time to cry “Peace, 
peace—for there is no peace!” The citi¬ 
zens of these United States are again en¬ 
gaged in a mighty war. Larger, more 
determined, more valorous armies are 
being marshaled today than those that 
wore the blue and the gray from ’61 to ’65. 
More lives are being sacrificed, more 
homes devastated, more property de¬ 
stroyed, more fortunes wrecked, more 

[ 89 ] 



O n .T h e Firing Line 


individual careers ruined, and the issues 
are more profound in this war for sobriety 
than were ever involved in the War of the 
Rebellion. The figures of inebriety that 
represent the wastefulness of the saloon, 
the weakness and wickedness of drunk¬ 
ards, the wretchedness of their homes, the 
misery of their children, the humiliation 
of their wives, are simply beyond com¬ 
parison with the gruesome figures of the 
most gigantic and wicked of wars. 

This battle-ground is not sectional; the 
weapons are not bullets and bayonets, but 
arguments and ballots. None the less, it 
is war, war to the hilt. An unrelenting, 
unyielding, irreconcilable battle is on be¬ 
tween the forces of temperance and intem¬ 
perance, the army of the sane and the 
sober fighting against the army of the dis¬ 
solute and those who would profit from 
dissipation by bartering in the stuff that 
dissipates. More and more clearly is the 
issue drawn; more and more inevitable is 
the battle. 

Today the commanders of the drink 

[ 90 ] 



The Flanking Columns 


army, like Bragg on Missionary Ridge, 
may look down complacently, perhaps 
contemptuously, upon what they deem the 
dirty starvelings in the grim army of re¬ 
formers. They may look with confidence 
upon that invulnerable line of saloon-keep¬ 
ers, seven thousand or more in Chicago 
alone, backed by the well-fed hosts who 
are engaged in the liquor industries in one 
way or another. The complacency of 
these whiskey Braggs, the Generals in the 
army, may seem altogether justifiable in 
view of the exhaustless resources back of 
them, the abundant capital, the mountain¬ 
ous aggregations of the brewing and dis¬ 
tilling interests of the United States, the 
expert legal skill, the subtleties of poli¬ 
ticians who have for so long maintained 
efficient back-door connections with the 
saloons of the country. According to the 
official figures for the fiscal year ending 
June 30, 1909, the drink bill of the United 
States amounted to $1,745,300,385, almost 
twice as much as the United States debt. 
During the same time the government 

[ 91 ] 



On The Firing Line 


returns showed that 133,450,755 gallons 
of distilled liquors were produced in the 
United States, and 56,303,497 barrels of 
beer. In view of the mighty combinations 
of capital, the humble and faithful armies 
of private laborers who are shedding hon¬ 
est sweat in the business, and the appetites 
pandered and developed, to satisfy which 
required in 1907 twenty-three gallons of 
stimulants of one kind or another per 
capita, well may the General Bragg of 
these inebriating armies look down with 
complacent derision on the beleaguered 
hosts in front, made up of poorly fed and 
inadequately disciplined regiments of 
reformers and agitators, impecunious 
preachers, impractical idealists, well- 
meaning rhapsodists and disfranchised 
women, whom they suspect of forgetting 
that this is earth and not heaven, and that 
consequently one must needs deal with 
men, fallible men, and not with angels. 

The attacking army in front seems to 
be an inadequate one; it appears to be 
fighting in a losing battle, a well-nigh 

[ 92 ] 



The Flanking Columns 


hopeless one. Surely the past and, appar¬ 
ently, the plain, prosaic business present, 
seem to be against them. But lo! un¬ 
looked for flanking forces are swinging 
into line. The Hooker of science is climb¬ 
ing Lookout Mountain; his men are now 
fighting above the clouds, but their feet 
are on solid ground; they are going to 
hold the rugged heights they have 
achieved. The laws of hygiene, sanitary 
science, the white-robed nurses in the 
hospital, the testimony of clear-eyed 
physicians are flanking the saloon-keep¬ 
ing army. More and more clear, nearer 
and nearer to unanimity, is the testimony 
of the flanking army of science that alco¬ 
hol is an intruder in the physical organ¬ 
ism; that whiskey is a poison, and that 
whatever of value or nutriment there may 
be in beer, that infinitesimal quantity 
lurks there in spite of, not on account of, 
the two per cent or more of alcohol, for 
the sake of which most men drink the 
dirty stuff. According to the over¬ 
whelming consensus of the competent in 

[ 93 ] 



On The Firing Line 


science, the economy of alcohol in the 
healthy body is, to say the least, extremely 
doubtful, and its function in the diseased 
body is a delicate, subtle problem which 
only such experts as are competent to 
pronounce on medicines and the medicinal 
values of poisons can decide. 

The saloon-keeping and saloon-patron¬ 
izing army is loath to take issue with the 
physician. They have been content thus 
far to ignore him; they either underesti¬ 
mate or wholly ignore the existence of 
this flanking army. They know that no 
physician who cares a straw for his repu¬ 
tation will undertake to justify the bibu¬ 
lous habits which alone make the saloon 
business profitable. The man who wants 
his one glass of beer with his dinner, or 
who is contented with a five-cent lunch¬ 
eon, has little or nothing in common with 
the man who joins with his three or more 
pals in the hospitalities of the saloon, 
which require that before their luncheon 
is over four glasses be poured into the 
stomach, making the luncheon cost not 

[ 94 ] 



The Flanking Columns 


five, but twenty cents. The saloon has 
no more effective enemy than the solitary 
one-glass-of-beer luncher. The proprietor 
loses money on him, and were all of 
his patrons to come within hailing dis¬ 
tance of the scientific minimum, it would 
soon break up the saloon business, which 
cannot live on the physician’s prescription. 
Science, even of the most conservative 
and reactionary kind, is flanking the 
drinking forces of the United States, and 
with its aid the temperance forces that 
are now fighting above the clouds are 
destined to rout the enemy. 

Dr. George W. Webster, President of 
the Illinois State Board of Health, is a 
man to compel a hearing, and when, in 
a public address recently given before the 
critical audience which makes up the 
Chicago Medical Society, he said that 
the death rate from alcohol is greater 
than that from tuberculosis, which aggre¬ 
gates 140,000 a year; when he said that 
ten per cent of all the deaths in the United 
States are caused, directly or indirectly, 

[ 95 ] 



On The Firing Line 


by the use of alcoholic stimulants; that 
twenty per cent of our insane owe their 
condition to its use; that it costs the 
United States twelve billions a year to 
maintain its asylums and its institutions 
peopled largely by the victims of alcohol; 
when he said that the death rate of alco¬ 
holics from pneumonia is fifty per cent; 
and, further, when he testified that both 
mental and physical work can be done 
more efficiently, with fewer mistakes and 
less danger to the individual, without alco¬ 
hol; that in infectious diseases the ab¬ 
stainer has a better chance for recovery; 
that alcohol always destroys the resisting 
power of the body and lowers the vitality, 
he compelled the profession and the laity 
alike to take notice. 

And Doctor Webster is only one of 
thousands. The same testimony comes 
from over the sea; academic Germany has 
served notice on the Kaiser that the 
bibulous habit which has menaced his 
health and power is undermining the 
virility of the German army, and heroic 

[ 96 ] 



The Flanking Columns 


steps are being taken to put even the 
fighting Germans on a temperance basis. 

Now, lo and behold! the somber, grim 
William Tecumseh Sherman, head of the 
economic forces, field marshal of the 
business men, has crossed the Tennessee 
and is moving his solid but quiet indus¬ 
trial columns up the Chickamauga valley. 
He is surprising General Bragg; he leads 
another flanking column on the enemy's 
right. The great captains of industry 
are learning more and more the waste¬ 
fulness of the drink habit, the deteriorat¬ 
ing influence of the saloon upon their 
employes. They can estimate in dollars 
and cents the wretchedness that might 
be avoided, aye, that is being avoided 
largely when communities go “Dry.” 
The business wisdom of this economic 
army is demoralizing the whole line; 
it is sweeping the country in the rear 
of the enemy. First it took possession of 
the rural regions, then of the villages, and 
now city after city is surrendering, not 

[ 97 ] 



On The Firing Line 


through the action of the army in front 
but through the irresistible movements of 
this flanking army of common sense, 
financial thrift and business wisdom. The 
political boss, with his “What will you 
have?” is losing his power in the presence 
of the business boss, who says to the voter 
as to the toiler, “Don’t make a fool of 
yourself!” 

Nine States of the Union have already 
become prohibition States, four of them 
made such by constitutional amendment. 
They represent a population of fifteen 
million or more people. Thirty-three 
States of the Union have local option pro¬ 
vision; sixteen of these have county units. 
Already it is estimated that about two- 
thirds of the area of the United States is 
“Dry” territory, in which the saloon busi¬ 
ness, as a business, is illicit. This is 
chiefly the result of a flanking army whose 
movements are as irresistible, as rapid, 
and fraught with as much danger as were 
the movements of Sherman’s columns up 
Tunnel Hill. 

[ 98 ] 



The Flanking Columns 


In 1909 there was a decrease in the 
production of beer of 2,444,183 barrels in 
the United States. The per capita con¬ 
sumption of spirits of all kinds reached its 
maximum in the United States in 1907, 
tw^enty-three gallons as already stated; 
1909 saw a reduction of two gallons per 
head throughout the United States. This 
decrease is obviously largely the result of 
the flanking army of economists, and this 
General Bragg's army is most amenable 
to the dollars-and-cents argument. It is 
economic sense building on the economic 
necessity that is winning the undemon¬ 
strative, silent voter; this is doing the 
business. The political boss, whose de¬ 
pendence is upon the “bhoys” rather than 
upon the men in this war, and the un¬ 
scrupulous speculators in the weakness of 
men and the virtue of women, are losing 
their power in the presence of the awak¬ 
ened and enlightened taxpayer. It does 
not follow that all this flanking army of 
voters are teetotalers, either in theory or 
in practice; they certainly are not all 

[ 99 ] 



On The Firing Line 


political prohibitionists; they may have 
arrived at no conclusive creed concerning 
the drink question; they do not know what 
the final social adjustment is to be. The 
vast majority see with perfect clearness 
that there must be more and not less pro¬ 
vision made for the social amenities, for 
the pastimes, the reunions of men and 
women. All workingmen, whether they 
work with the pick, the file, the pen, or the 
tireless activity of the brain, are simply 
tired of seeing the substance of the com¬ 
munity wasted, disgusted with the cost of 
policemen and courts that are kept busy 
handling vulgar drunks and are made in¬ 
efficient by the subtle demoralizations of 
their seducers. The most effective tem¬ 
perance organizations in America today 
are the great industrial plants, and their 
leaders are the captains of industry. Their 
conclusions are based upon the unerring 
and consequently overwhelming testi¬ 
mony of the ledger. It is another case 
where “figures will not lie.” They have 

discovered the persistent foe to pros- 
[ 100 ] 



The Flanking Column 


perity, the insidious enemy of efficient 
labor, the sources of danger in places of 
trust and responsibility. In this great 
flanking army of business perhaps the 
mighty railway systems of America are 
the most effective corps. Rule “Eight,” 
published for the government and infor¬ 
mation of employes, on the working card 
of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul 
Railway System, in force on all the divi¬ 
sions of that road, runs as follows: 

The use of intoxicating drinks has proven a most 
fruitful source of trouble to railways as well as to 
individuals. The company will exercise the most rigid 
scrutiny in reference to the habits of employes in this 
respect, and any employe who has been dismissed on 
this account will not be re-employed. Drinking when 
on duty or frequenting saloons will not be tolerated, 
and preference will be given to those who do not drink 
at all. 

This represents in substance the regula¬ 
tions enforced by all the leading railway 
systems of the United States and Canada. 
Thirty-two railroad companies furnished 
such information to the Anti-Saloon 
League Year Book for 1909, the reports 

on which may be consulted on pages 143- 
[ 101 ] 




On The Firing Line 


147 of said book. Similar information 
has been courteously given me by many 
of the officials representing the leading 
trunk lines centering in Chicago. The 
Burlington System, in their general rules, 
prohibit the use of intoxicants while on 
duty, and further state that the habitual 
use or the frequenting of places where in¬ 
toxicants are sold is sufficient cause for 
dismissal. 

The General Manager of another great 
system centering in Chicago writes me: 

While we have no printed matter on the subject, these 
unwritten rules are thoroughly understood. The drink¬ 
ing of liquor is not tolerated among employes, particu¬ 
larly those in train and engine service; and frequenters 
of saloons are arbitrarily dismissed whether ever seen 
in an intoxicated condition or not. 

The following from a general notice 
issued by the Third Vice-President of the 
Baltimore & Ohio Railway System, Jan¬ 
uary 1st, 1908, is taken from the Year 
Book alluded to above: 

Officers and employes will take notice that there will 
not be employed, nor permitted to remain in the service, 
in the capacity of trainmaster, dispatcher, operator, en¬ 
gineer, fireman or trainman, yardman, block or other 
[ 102 ] 



The Flanking Columns 


signalman, watchman, or in other positions in any way 
charged with the direction or operation of trains, per¬ 
sons who use intoxicants, either while on duty or off 
duty. Under no circumstances will exceptions be made. 

The Pere Marquette Railroad Com¬ 
pany, in Rule Twenty-three, provides that 
employes in any capacity who frequent 
places where liquor is sold will not be 
retained in the service. 

The laws of Michigan provide that 

No person shall be employed as engineer, train dis¬ 
patcher, fireman, baggage master, conductor, brakeman, 
or other servant, upon any railroad in any of its oper¬ 
ating departments, who uses intoxicating drinks as a 
beverage. 

A gigantic temperance movement has 
been organized among the employes of the 
Northwestern Railway System by their 
own initiative. When it was known that 
it was the settled policy of the road to 
retain the non-drinking men in dull sea¬ 
sons, a pledge signed by over 25,000 
employes, which had been circulated 
throughout the 7,000 miles of their sys¬ 
tem, was forwarded to the President of 
the road. 


[ 103 ] 



On The Firing Line 


But the railroad companies are not 
alone in discovering the economic value 
of sobriety and the business necessity of 
enforcing temperance habits. The follow¬ 
ing carefully prepared statement, which 
shows what one business firm can do and 
has done in Chicago in the way of flanking 
the drinking army, was furnished me by 
one high in the employ of a great mail 
order firm of this city: 

Several tracts adjacent to the forty-acre lot pur¬ 
chased by us in 1904 for our new plant are prohibition 
by local option. As soon as we began building 
operations, saloons grew up around us like mushrooms. 
We had to do something to protect our female help 
and prevent bad conditions generally, so we passed 
the eight-block rule, which makes it a “capital offense” 
for any employe to enter a saloon at any time (in busi¬ 
ness hours or out of them) within eight blocks of our 
plant. 

Regarding the effect on real estate: I find there is a 
widespread objection to industrial establishments in 
residence districts, based on actual experience of de¬ 
creasing real estate values. A neighborhood is said 
to be “killed” for residence purposes as soon as busi¬ 
ness enters it. This, I find, is not due to factory noises, 
traffic, smoke, smell, or other essential symptoms of 
industry; but to a certain amount of disorder and dis¬ 
turbance on the street after business hours in factory 
districts. Here is where the saloon is directly at fault. 

[104] 



The Flanking Columns 


By attracting the worker’s attention before he goes 
home, the saloon gets a much larger share of his earn¬ 
ings than it possibly could under other conditions. 
Our plant has not injured real estate values in the 
least; neither have the adjacent plants of makers of 
baking powder, machinery, etc. Residences and flats 
of better class are being built around our forty acres 
in a solid wall. Several hundred of our own employes 
live within four blocks of the plant. 

Viewed from the employers’ standpoint, the saloon 
is an absolutely unmitigated nuisance. Assuming that 
one man has as much right to drink beer with his 
dinner as another has to drink coffee, the fact remains 
that no bar or saloon could make a profit on drinks so 
served. The real profit in the liquor business in this 
country comes from the drinker, and a drinker is not 
one who takes a glass of beer with a meal, but one 
who drinks generally without eating and always to 
excess. 

The saloon can never prove to the employer of labor 
that it is anything but his enemy. Look at our list of male 
absentees on a Monday morning and you see the work 
of the saloon. Add to the money actually spent over 
the bar the amount lost through inability to work the 
following day, or the reduction in capacity in case of 
a piece worker, and you have in a nutshell the worker’s 
curse and the employer’s problem—both the product of 
the saloon. 

All authorities agree that the American saloon is the 
nastiest public institution on earth. Foreigners who 
were harmless drinkers of beer in Germany or of light 
wines in France or Italy, come here and are promptly 
converted to viciousness by the foodless drinking and 
treating habits here prevailing. 

If the “personal liberty” folks are sincere in their 
[105] 



On The Firing Line 


ideas of saving to the foreigners their leisurely Euro¬ 
pean glass, let them organize something different from 
the American saloon as a means of serving the drinks 
they call harmless. 

Business and the saloon have come to a final parting 
of the ways. The doors of progress and promotion 
are closed to any man who finds his associates or 
recreation in the barroom. 

Another corps in the flanking in this bat¬ 
tle against intoxicants is the well discip- 
plined, clear-eyed, aggressive column of 
the unenfranchised women who have got 
tired of merely weeping and only praying, 
either to man or to God. They have 
wearied of waiting or of waging a personal 
and unorganized guerrilla warfare against 
their great enemy; they are drilling their 
recruits; they are hitching their prayers to 
the gun carriages; they are moving the 
artillery of reason. Today they are voting 
by proxy; tomorrow they will be voting in 
their own God-given rights, assuming the 
full stature of living souls. 

When this flanking army, directed by 
judgment, inspired by conscience and 
armed with the ballot, gets fairly into line, 
it is bound to win. 


[ 106 ] 



The Flanking Columns 


There is another unexpected source of 
re-enforcement. The entrenched army is 
itself weakening. Colonels are deserting 
their colors and taking to the other side. 
The self-respecting elements in the saloon 
army, and there are such, are beginning 
to see a great light. Saloon-keepers 
themselves are beginning to be ashamed 
of their business. They are not willing 
that their wives should be permanently 
humiliated and their children publicly dis¬ 
graced. This movement among saloon¬ 
keepers for law-abiding saloons I believe 
to be, in the main, sincere and of immense 
significance, but as American society is 
now constituted, with the growing intelli¬ 
gence and thrift of the American citizen, 
a “law-abiding saloon,” wherein no row¬ 
dyism, intoxication or law-breaking is 
permitted, is a financial fallacy. It means 
inevitable bankruptcy to an overwhelming 
percentage of the present retail dealers in 
intoxicants throughout our land. 

The result of a recent careful survey 
made under the direction of James K. 

[ 107 ] 



On The Firing Line 


Shields, State Superintendent of the Anti- 
Saloon League of Illinois, disclosed the 
fact that there are 11,338 feet of saloon 
frontage in the Loop District of Chicago, 
a territory bounded on the north by the 
river, on the east by the lake, on the south 
by Harrison street, and on the west by the 
river. In other words, over two miles of 
saloons intrude upon the business centers 
of Chicago. From the same source we 
learn that on North Clark street, from the 
river to Lincoln Park, the street of retail 
business on the North Side, there are 77 
saloons, of which 52 have wine rooms, 42 
are connected with houses of ill fame, and 
nearly all of them have “family entrances” 
and pianos. 

The workers of the Abraham Lincoln 
Centre, at my request, made a similar 
survey of the adjoining territory, bounded 
on the north by Thirty-fifth street, on the 
east by Ellis avenue, on the south by Thir¬ 
ty-ninth street, on the west by Grand 
Boulevard. They found there were 49 

saloons, 14 of them corner saloons, nearly 
[ 108 ] 



The Flanking Columns 


all of them having “ladies’ entrances,” 
many of them having gambling places and 
bawdy houses in connection therewith. 
Here are 1,196 feet, nearly one-quarter of 
a mile, of saloons in a territory that con¬ 
tains but one schoolhouse and three 
churches. In the same territory there are 
but 19 groceries, 9 meat markets, 13 res¬ 
taurants, 6 bakeries and 8 drug stores, 
making but 55 stands to cater to the neces¬ 
sities of life against 49 places of dissipa¬ 
tion. The total frontage of these legiti¬ 
mate dispensaries of physical needs is 
about 1,405 feet, or only 209 feet in excess 
of the debauching frontage. Under any 
attempt to bring the trade of beer and 
whiskey down to the limits of legality, 
decency, and the boasted sanity of mod¬ 
erate drinkers, it is obvious that much of 
this “business” would go to the wall. 

When the flanking armies were closing 
in on Bragg’s forces and his lines broke 
on Missionary Ridge, General Thomas’ 
hungry boys were surprised to find that 
no inconsiderable number of their sup- 

[ 109 ] 



On The Firing Line 


posed enemies had thrown away their 
guns and were running, not away from, 
but toward the victorious column. They 
had had enough of rebellion. Their sober 
second thought had been at work and, an¬ 
ticipating their great General, the hero of 
Appomattox, they were brave enough to 
change their minds; to see the next right 
thing to do. Acknowledging his defeat, 
General Lee turned to lead the boys who 
had followed him to the death line, up the 
academic heights of life. Under his lead 
they were now ready to guard the honor 
of the flag which, under the same lead, 
they once riddled with bullets. 

So will it be; so is it now, with the en¬ 
trenched hosts of inebriety. Already the 
rank and file are beginning to suspect that 
the organized brewers and distillers of 
America are false champions of liberty. 
Their real inspiration, of which they them¬ 
selves are only half conscious, is the hope 
of a golden harvest. Business men are in 
the liquor trade, as in other trades, for the 

money there is in it. Gold and not liberty, 
[ 110 ] 



The Flanking Columns 


greed and not patriotism, inspires them, 
and when they find their capital menaced 
and begin to realize that there is no profit 
in the business, the manufacturers, the 
brewers and distillers, the dealers, 
whether wholesale or retail, are going to 
throw away their guns and join the vic¬ 
torious army. 

But let not the temperance phalanxes 
be lured with the hope that the war is over. 
The victory is not yet won, because the 
vision is not yet clear. 

I was a part of Sherman’s flanking 
army; I watched the stealthy, silent, mid¬ 
night construction of the pontoon bridge; 
our battery was the first to venture upon 
the floating structure; we were at the far¬ 
ther end as soon as the last planks were 
laid, and our guns were among the first 
to be drawn, by human hands, up heights 
too steep and through thickets too dense 
for the horses to travel. I was in the des¬ 
perate battle; I saw the battering of the 

column and the mangled lines, and heard 
[in] 



On The Firing Line 


the midnight groans of the uncared for. 
I was part of the pursuing column. But 
two weeks after Braxton Bragg’s head¬ 
quarters had been captured we had to turn 
our horses out that they might perchance 
save their lives by browsing the naked 
trees in midwinter; and one morning as 
the sun arose upon hungry boys, the com¬ 
manding officer said: 

Boys, there is nothing for you to eat. As you went 
to bed last night supperless, you must start out this 
morning breakfastless. There are provisions at Bridge¬ 
port; thirty miles of mud between you and your dinner; 
get there any way you can, as you can. There will be 
roll call of those who survive the march after you have 
had something to eat at Bridgeport. 

Thus will it be in this war for sobriety, 
this battle for soul-liberty, this triumph 
of judgment over appetite. O, there are 
many hardships, privations, dangers, mis¬ 
takes, temporary defeats, local dismay 
and panics ahead of us! 

But it is a glorious war. Science, re¬ 
ligion, education and patriotism, the 
saints and the sages, our mothers, wives 

and sisters, are in the ranks with us. 

[ 112 ] 



The Flanking Columns 


The reserve corps is moving up! 

The flanking columns are swinging into 
line! 

The bugle sounds the “Assembly!” 
Friends of Purity, Sobriety, Liberty— 
Fall in! 

Touch elbows! Right, dress! Forward, 
march! 


[1133 



CONTENTS. 

A Night in a Saloon. 7 

Two Neighbors. 43 

The Flanking Columns. 81 


APPENDIX. 

A Letter to Saloon-Keepers.117 

A Letter to Workingmen.122 

A Letter to Women.127 

A Letter to a Beer Advocate.131 











A 

Night 
In a 
Saloon 
















‘ 
















































A Letter to the Saloon-Keepers of 
Chicago 


Friends and Fellon> Citizens: 

Such we certainly are, or ought to be, for deep below 
our contentions our interests are one. We all want to 
conserve the home, honor our city and serve our coun¬ 
try. We have a common interest in our wives and our 
children and a common desire to provide for them in 
honorable ways and to earn for ourselves an honest 
living. 

Let me hasten to assure you that I am interested in 
an anti-saloon movement and not in an anti-saloon 
keepers’ movement. As a friend, then, I beg you to 
consider with me the changing times, the trend of 
thought shaped by the growing science and enlarging 
experiences of our day. Things are not as they used 
to be. The conditions of the Old World, from which 
many of us came, cannot be reproduced here. The 
American saloon is not identical with the beer gardens 
and wine rooms of Europe and cannot be made so. 
Recent action taken by your own representatives in 
many cities shows that you recognize many things con¬ 
nected with your business tending toward the disagree¬ 
able, the illegal, the indecent and the immoral, and 
that you are tr} r ing to lift the business into respectabil¬ 
ity and law-abiding conditions. No one can know as 
well as yourselves that your customers often over 
drink and that you are compelled to witness boisterous 
[117] 




































































To Thomas, John, James, Enos and Philip , 
Loyal Brothers. 


Consistent practice is more convincing than preaching. 


On The Firing Line 


prosper business, and bring increasing self-respect to 
the thousand saloon-keepers Engaged in this enterprise. 
Is it possible to preserve the good elements of the 
saloon after the treating habit that leads to drunken¬ 
ness is abolished? We are up to this experiment. 
Will you help us? 

In conclusion we ask you to remember that this is 
not a prohibition campaign, or even a total abstinence 
campaign. Those who still think that alcoholic drinks 
are necessary to their health or their pleasure might 
still seek them as they seek their milk, their cheese 
and their bread, in packages, not to be eaten and 
drunken on the premises. It is the retail places where 
liquor is sold by the drinks, and its use is stimulated 
by the vicious treating habit of the American saloon— 
places where drunkards congregate and where drunk¬ 
ards are made, places from which your wives and chil¬ 
dren are excluded—that are condemned by the Amer¬ 
ican public, not alone by American fanatics. Liberty 
is not lawlessness, and the most rampant “personal 
liberty” man will admit that his liberty ends where the 
liberty of the other party begins. All government is 
a surrender of personal liberties for the sake of the 
larger liberties which come only in law-abiding and 
law-enforcing governments, made possible by order. 

Will you think of these things calmly in the quiet 
hours of the night? Will you talk these matters over 
frankly with your wives and children and your self- 
respecting, self-controlling patrons? Is it not possible 
for us in some way to talk over these things without 
the bitterness and extravagance of public debate? 

The American platform is unfortunately given to 
extravagant statements, oftentimes to bitter denuncia¬ 
tion and unkind insinuations; doubtless there will be 
much sinning on both sides during the struggle yet 
[ 120 ] 



A Letter to Saloon-Keepers 


before us. Let us forget and forgive in this direction 
and try to remember that honest and earnest men on 
both sides are trying to spell out a difficult problem, to 
find the better way. Let us remember that 

“New occasions teach new duties; 

Time makes ancient good uncouth. 

They must ever up and onward 
Who would keep abreast of Truth.” 

Fraternally yours. 


[ 121 ] 



On The Firing Line 


If they talked at all it was in a dull under¬ 
tone; they took their dose and, for the 
most part, went away. 

Then came the next higher grade of 
laborers — the Americanized, English- 
speaking or American-born teamsters, 
mechanics, bosses, bridge builders and 
cement workers. These were more jolly, 
cordial, boisterous, evidently many of them 
with homes that were tugging at their 
heart-strings; visions of waiting wives and 
watching children flitted before their 
eyes. Once in a while the wistful face of 
wife or child would appear at the door 
and “Yes, dear, wait, I am coming right 
along!” sounded like strange music in the 
place. And these snatches of conversation 
were overheard by the observing but un¬ 
observed “old man” who seemed poring 
over the newspaper in the corner. 

“Come, let’s go, boys.” 

“Oh, what’s the hurry? Have another 
glass.” 

“Well, I must go!” 

[ 14 ] 



A Night In a Saloon 


“Aw, cut it out! You’re afraid of that 
little woman, are you?” 

“Naw, he’s going to see his girl.” 

The drama had become intensely excit¬ 
ing to the man behind the newspaper. 
Was it comedy or tragedy? They 
slowly thinned out, the jolly crowd leav¬ 
ing at last only the daring, perverse, reck¬ 
less core that grew hilarious over the 
cards, boisterous over the dice that were 
to determine the next treat. 

Later in the evening there came a group 
of boys, schoolboys, bearing the insignia 
of “The Academy;” bright boys, steeped 
in the slang and enthusiasm of the frater¬ 
nities and athletics. They came to talk 
over the excitements of that day’s ball 
game with the visiting team from a town 
fifteen miles away. They frankly dis¬ 
cussed, in high glee, the way they had 
been “done up” by their visitors, who 

“played a-poor game at first” until 

the stakes were placed heavily against 
them; then by a planned accident a new 

[ 15 ] 



On The Firing Line 


The contentions of the Labor Unions, more clearly, 
perhaps, than any other organization in the United 
States, set forth the limitations of personal liberty. 
They teach that the personal liberty of one man ends 
where the rights of another are encroached upon. All 
organizations imply the surrender of individual rights 
to public good. In proportion as governments are 
benign and democratic, they protect the weak from the 
strong, the virtuous from the vicious, the noble im¬ 
pulses of the community from the greed of the ignoble 
and selfish scheming of the few. 

You know that the saloons, as now managed, are 
the workingman’s worst enemy. Go find the work¬ 
ingman’s children who are poorly shod, and the work¬ 
ingman’s wife who is shabbily dressed, and the work¬ 
ingman’s home that is poorly furnished with fuel and 
provisions, and you will know where to find the drink¬ 
ing man. Go find the workingman who is in debt, who 
is borrowing small sums of money and trying to save 
his financial face, and you will know who his largest 
creditor is. 

We all know that there is great need of more social 
privileges for working people, more places for inno¬ 
cent amusement, more centers for social gatherings, 
where neighbors may meet neighbors and take their 
wives and children along. The saloon is the worst 
place to offer such privileges. It is not a place where 
you can take your wives and children; so unfitting 
is this that it is prevented by city ordinance, and you 
know that the hospitalities of these places, even to men, 
are conditioned upon the amount of money spent at 
the bar. The free lunches that tempt you are not given 
you in charity, but from shrewd speculation—the givers 
get their money back. 

If the money spent by workingmen over the bars of 
[ 124 ] 



A L e t ter to Workingmen 


the saloons could be saved, and if the workingmen 
received just wages and their employers bore their 
rightful share of expenses in sustaining the city 
government and enforcing its ordinances concerning 
wholesome tenements, the social centers, the “poor 
men’s clubs” that our wealthy men are so solicitous 
about would be realized. The issue now presented 
is not one of total abstinence or prohibition, though 
many of us believe that life is made sweeter, healthier 
and happier by total abstinence from all intoxicants, 
but the fight is against the saloon as a tippling place 
and a treating place, an unsocial place from which your 
wives and children are excluded and where the patrons 
are bound together by no common social tie of race, 
religious preference, conviction or social taste. A relish 
for whiskey is a poor platform on which neighbors can 
come together. The beer and wine places of the old 
world, where men, women and children of common 
taste, a common language and a common religion 
come together to enjoy music and conversation, to 
sing and dance together with the sanctions of their 
religion and in the presence of their teachers and 
their priests, find no analogy in the American saloon, 
where the jargon of many languages is heard at once 
and where the tramp, the hobo, the petty criminal, 
the grafter and the big political boss are at home 
and are oftentimes most welcomed because they 
are the best patrons of the man behind the bar. 
If when this saloon nuisance is abated there is no way 
possible by which a workingman can furnish himself 
with his beers and his liquors at his home, or use them 
in the same way that his rich employer does on his own 
table and for his own guests, it is quite legitimate that 
we should all try to make his “privilege” possible and 
legal to the poor man, or else impossible and illegal 
[ 125 ] 



On The Firing Line 


of the locomotive, unsoiled by the debris of 
railway stations, rejoicing in velvety green 
lawns, basking beside a charming little 
lake. It was still suggestive of domestic 
purity, economic simplicity, financial pros¬ 
perity and social integrity. 

As might have been expected, on the 
outskirts of this village there was a suc¬ 
cessful boys’ school, an ideal place for 
such; a place where perplexed city parents 
might send their boys with minimum anx¬ 
iety, for seemingly it was a place far 
removed from temptations and vicious 
surroundings. 

But I was not the only one who had 
yielded to the attractions of the charming 
village on that beautiful summer night. 
Although it was yet early, I found the 
little town full of other visitors who had 
escaped from the city; the limited accom¬ 
modations of the old-fashioned hotel, the 
one hostelry of the village, were already 
exhausted, and I was driven to seek shelter 
for the night in the new saloon on the cor¬ 
ner, with a hotel attachment, fresh in its 
[ 10 ] 



A Night In a Saloon 


white paint and green blinds. The pro¬ 
prietor was a gentlemanly, intelligent, 
courteous young Americanized German. 
The hospitality of his spirit was genuine, 
and he was sorry to inform me that “the 
few hotel rooms up stairs” were already 
occupied. The equally attractive and 
kindly young wife, with her pretty first¬ 
born in her arms, who was called into 
council, thought she might find a spare 
room in some one of the adjoining houses; 
at least she was willing to do “the best 
she could” for me. A load of fragrant 
new-mown hay was being unloaded at the 
fresh new barn in the rear of the premises, 
and Roos had already settled the question 
for herself; she was already sampling the 
goods, and they were palatable; she would 
literally spend her night in clover, and I 
was willing to take my chances. 

Fully an hour elapsed before the young 
wife, who was “doing her own work” all 
the way from the bar to the kitchen stove, 
could begin to see what she could do for 

me, and when the private houses in the 
[in 



On The Firing Line 


trenched itself is that of the “social function.” Wine 
and its more plebeian companion, beer, are supposed 
to be essential counters of good will, gracious attend¬ 
ants upon conviviality, a necessary decoration to a 
society event, and their absence is supposed to be a 
reflection upon the hospitality, or at least an accent of 
some kind of Puritanic unsociability. Hence it is 
that thousands of gentle ladies, representing the refine¬ 
ment of the community, are found toying with the wine 
glass in the presence of their hosts, or, on more 
Bohemian occasions, tinkling their beer mugs and 
joking about the same. 

Well may such women pray with Robert Burns for 
the gift 

“To see oursel’s as ithers see us.” 

In the light of modern science as well as of social 
ethics, woman, trying to grace her table and her home 
with that which she discards in her own practice, is 
simply aping a bygone age; she is posing in the guise 
of the mediaeval “ladye” whose banquet logically ended 
in debauchery. No more essential to a respectable, in¬ 
telligent, sensible, sober, modern dinner party is the 
mediaeval fool with cap and bells than are the decanter 
and the beer bottle. 

Sisters, the day is at hand or soon will be when this 
condescension on the part of women to an outlived 
appetite and an obsolete or obsolescent practice will be 
considered, as it deserves to be, a vulgar flirtation with 
vice, a silly dallying with temptation, a laying of snares 
which may entangle the innocent feet of one’s own boys 
and the boys of her neighbors—if not her own sons, 
husband and brothers, then somebody else’s sons, hus¬ 
bands and brothers. 

But this appeal to women should go much further 
than to the “favored” and the “safe.” Only the unin- 
[ 128 ] 



A Letter to Women 


formed women and the socially hardened can be ob¬ 
livious to the awful burden which the drink habit foists 
upon their sisters. Go study the statistics of the 
workingwomen; follow your washerwoman, your dress¬ 
maker or your shop girl to her home; trace the sources 
of her poverty; analyze the meagerness of the cup¬ 
board, the raggedness of the wardrobe, and you will 
promptly come upon this as one of the fundamental 
sources of the woman and child problem in the indus¬ 
trial life of today. Not only are these working girls, 
widows and mothers driven to the loom, the stores 
and the wash tub by man’s love of drink, but under the 
same fell inspiration men lie in wait for these victims 
and in ways known only to those inspired by the 
degradations of the cup, trap them to disgrace and 
death. There is an evil designated as the ‘‘social evil.” 
Separate that from the “drink evil” and the “social evil,” 
as now understood, as a municipal problem largely 
ceases to be. Human passions will remain to bless or 
to curse individuals, but lust as an asset in business, as 
a commercial commodity, an investment for capital, will 
pass away with the passing of drinking, because as a 
business it will not pay without the drinking accessories. 

This is the age of woman’s clubs. Woman is in the 
forefront of every agitation for the advancement of 
civilization. It is high time that women in their or¬ 
ganized capacity, in their most successful and fashion¬ 
able organizations, should recommit themselves to this 
cause, free themselves from the traditional trammels, 
take hold with twentieth century courage of this move¬ 
ment that seeks to eliminate from modern American 
life the nasty degrading places, so unfit for them and 
their children that they are excluded from them by city 
ordinance. 

Sisters, you may not vote yet, but you can do im- 
[ 129 ] 



On The Firing Line 


measurably more than has yet been done by women in 
the interest of children and the home, morality and 
the State, by taking the twentieth century stand against 
that which science, economics, and, at the present time, 
the municipal experience of a growing number of cities 
prove to be unnecessary to the joyous, progressive life 
of men and women, whether they be at their toil or at 
their amusements. It is as little necessary to promote 
play as it is to promote work. Alcohol is a poison; its 
place in the human economy must be determined by 
the men of science; it is a medicine and not a food, and 
if it is given only such functions as are decreed for it 
by the physicians the problem will be solved. The trade 
in it will cease to be profitable and no lady will care to 
drug her guests according to a physician’s prescription. 

It is unworthy the modern woman to parry with a 
smile an appeal to conscience or to dismiss with a joke 
a call of reason or a cry of the helpless. Sisters, take 
this question seriously; think it over in the privacy of 
your own chamber; lay it upon the altar of your con¬ 
science; consider it as in the presence of the ever- 
living God and the everlasting interests of His children. 

Very fraternally yours. 


[ 130 ] 



A Letter to an Advocate of Beer as 
a Temperance Drink 


Dear Friend: 

Our conversation the other day provoked much 
thinking on my part and compelled me to go over 
again the whole situation with as much care as I am 
capable of, and I am moved to write you some of the 
results of this thinking. 

First, let me assure you that your acts as well as your 
teaching prove that you are as sincere a friend of 
sobriety and as honest a foe as I am of the dissipation, 
vulgarity and low morality, personal and political, that 
gather around the typical American saloon. I believe 
that you desire to eliminate those obnoxious elements 
out of the community as sincerely as I do, and that you 
have no interest in common with the selfish commercial 
and speculative interests of the great capitalistic com¬ 
bines represented by the brewers and distillers of 
America. 

I admit also, without argument, your contention that 
on account of the low percentage of alcohol contained 
a glass of beer is comparatively innocent when com¬ 
pared with a glass of whiskey; I accept also your state¬ 
ment, based on better information than I am possessed 
of, that fewer villainous compounds, substitutes and 
adulterations enter into the composition of the beer 
than into that of the whiskey that is passed over the 
average saloon bar. I am inclined to think that you 
are right also in the statement that the toxic effect of 
[ 131 ] 



On The Firing Line 


beer is less than that of coffee, or perhaps tea, when 
drunk in the same quantities. I also agree with you 
perfectly that the social element represented by the 
saloon must be conserved, and that even with the 
seven thousand or more saloons in Chicago, for ex¬ 
ample, the social opportunities, the chances for neigh¬ 
bors to get together for innocent communion and 
amusement are deplorably inadequate. 

Having made these concessions, the following facts 
remain and have important bearing upon the question 
at issue. It is true, is it not, that both beer and 
whiskey are seductive drinks on account of the alcohol 
they contain? Repeated experiments show that any 
non-alcoholic compound, on beer or other lines, is a 
business failure because people will not drink more 
than is needful of such compounds to satisfy the craving 
for food or nourishment; the profit always comes from 
the over-drinking. But is not the low percentage of 
alcohol in beer more than compensated by the larger 
quantities imbibed? My druggist estimates that two 
glasses of average saloon beer contain as much alcohol 
as one glass of whisky. I suppose that eight glasses 
of beer per day would be considered very moderate beer 
drinking, and I am told that twenty glasses represent 
the easy accomplishment of the habitual beer drinker, 
who still insists that he is strictly temperate and never 
intoxicated. Render this equivalent into whiskey and 
you have the minimum of four glasses of whiskey per 
day, which certainly exceeds the claim of the whiskey 
drinker who insists that he never takes too much, and a 
maximum of ten glasses of whiskey a day, which clear¬ 
ly puts a man into the class of over-drinkers. The ex¬ 
tended girth and the blossoming nose, the familiar 
characteristics of the beer guzzler, testify to the fact 
that there is something about the beer mug that leads 
[ 132 ] 



A Letter to a Beer Advocate 


to over-drinking. And as a matter of fact, if my drug¬ 
gist is correct, is not beer drinking always accompanied, 
not only with alcoholic temptations, but with actual 
tendencies to alcoholic excesses? 

Your picture of the delightful domestic felicities of 
the German beer garden and the French and Italian 
wine cafes is certainly attractive, and I am not in a 
position to deny the accuracy of your endorsement. 
But are the sociological, to say nothing of the climatic 
conditions of the United States such as to make a re¬ 
production of these European conditions possible? 
The homogeneous character of the population, the less 
strenuous life, the simpler and purer drinks, the ab¬ 
sence of the get-rich-quick madness of the dealers and 
manufacturers of Europe, do not obtain in our Amer¬ 
ican cities. The mixed population, the sharp distinc¬ 
tions between the rich and the poor in their bibulous 
habits, between employers and employes, and the damn¬ 
able distinction of sex which excludes all self-respecting 
women from the companionship of all self-respecting 
men in their hours of recreation and social amenities, 
are factors in the American saloon not known in the 
European resorts which you admire. 

From your own standpoint, when you have made a 
decent drinking place where only beer and light wines 
are indulged in, and those only in such quantities as 
wait on digestion and good companionship, a place 
where women and children are welcome and may go 
with impunity, have we not come to something very 
different from the great majority of the seven thousand 
saloons now infesting our city? And is there any hope 
of arriving at these social centers, recreation parks, etc., 
that you and I both work for, until we have broken the 
power of the god Mammon who has so enlisted the co¬ 
operation of King Gambrinus? In other words, such 
[ 133 ] 



On The Firing Line 


a saloon as you want is possible only when such saloons 
as we have are abolished, root and branch. 

Thus you see the process of reasoning by which I 
arrive at the conclusion that you, your misgivings not¬ 
withstanding, as well as I, belong to the anti-saloon 
league, and that we go but a little way in our prac¬ 
tical effort at reform until we come together and stand 
shoulder to shoulder in the tasks of abating the saloon 
nuisance and eliminating the poisons out of our food 
and our drink, one of which poisons is alcohol, whose 
economy in the physical organism of man, if it has any, 
is medicinal, and the time and quantity of whose use are 
to be determined by the expert physician and not by 
the deceptive itch of the palate that is perverted by a 
dangerous habit. Cordially yours. 


[ 134 ] 






































































































































































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